The state Supreme Court will not intervene in a case brought by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and a half-dozen other news outlets seeking to immediately stop a practice that the news outlets say allows commonwealth agencies to destroy public records at will.
The application for extraordinary relief was filed in April. On Monday, the high court simply stated the application was denied. That puts the case involving the preservation of emails back in the jurisdiction of Commonwealth Court.
Frederick Frank, attorney for the Post-Gazette, said, “We are disappointed that the Supreme Court did not take jurisdiction over the matter. We note that the issue is still pending before the Commonwealth Court and that ultimately any decision would be reviewed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court as the Commonwealth Court action is an original jurisdiction action. We remain hopeful that the court will examine the important public policy matter at issue here and grant appropriate relief regarding the email retention policy.”
Jeff Sheridan, spokesman for the governor, said, “The administration awaits the Commonwealth Court’s ruling on its motion (i.e., preliminary objections) to dismiss the Post-Gazette’s lawsuit as being without merit under the law.”
The case pits the intent of the state Right-to-Know law against the state’s ability to maintain records in any manner it chooses under the records retention statute and policy.
The initial lawsuit was filed in September in the final months of the Corbett administration. The Wolf administration, sworn in in January, appeared to embrace the former administration’s position.
Across 47 agencies in the executive branch, employees can decide for themselves which emails to keep and which to discard as “transitory.” Five days after being discarded, the emails are deleted from state servers, unable to be recovered under the Right-to-Know law.
About 80,000 employees produce nearly 5 million emails a week.
Along with PG Publishing and the Post-Gazette, other news outlets seeking relief are Texas-New Mexico Partnership, publisher of York Daily Record/Sunday News, Chambersburg Public Opinion, The (Hanover) Evening Sun and Lebanon Daily News; PA Media Group, publisher of The Patriot-News in Harrisburg and PennLive website in Mechanicsburg; and LNP Media Group Inc., publisher of newspapers in Lancaster.
In the application for extraordinary relief, attorneys for the news outlets stated that the agencies and Commonwealth Court, in a preliminary, single-judge ruling Oct. 31, said that Section 507 of the Right-to-Know law “gives commonwealth agencies the power to create any record retention policy they wish, even if the policy results in destruction of all public records, thereby shielding the destroyed records from disclosure and violating both the letter and spirit of (the Right-to-Know law).”
Eleanor Chute: echute@post-gazette.com.
First Published: June 30, 2015, 4:23 a.m.
