Commonwealth v. Office of Open Records

103 A.3d 1276, 628 Pa. 163, 2014 Pa. LEXIS 2928
CourtSupreme Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedNovember 10, 2014
StatusPublished
Cited by70 cases

This text of 103 A.3d 1276 (Commonwealth v. Office of Open Records) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Commonwealth v. Office of Open Records, 103 A.3d 1276, 628 Pa. 163, 2014 Pa. LEXIS 2928 (Pa. 2014).

Opinions

OPINION

Chief Justice CASTILLE.

In this open-records matter, we are called upon to construe Section 703 of the Right-to-Know Law (RTKL), 65 P.S. § 67.703 (“Section 703”), setting forth the requirements for written RTKL requests for access to public records, to determine proper application of the provision which directs that all such requests “must be' addressed to the open-records officer.” For reasons stated below, we hold that in order to establish a valid RTKL request sufficient to trigger appellate rights from a nonresponse under the RTKL, the re-questor must address his request to the respective open-records officer as mandated in Section 703. Accordingly, we reverse.

I.

On March 20, 2009, intervenor James D. Schneller (“requestor”), of Eastern Pennsylvania Citizens Against Gambling, sent an email to Catherine Stetler, a press aide in the Office of Communications and Legislative Affairs of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (“GCB”), requesting copies of communications between the GCB and several applicants for gaming licenses, as well as copies of the financial data that each applicant provided to the GCB. He also asked for permission to speak at the GCB’s next public hearing, and copied his request to the GCB’s Director of Media Relations and Chief Enforcement Counsel. It is undisputed that requestor did not make mention of any open-records officer in his written request. On March 24, 2009, the press aide responded to the written request by return email, wherein she apologized for having been out of the office and attached a public comment sign-up form with instructions to return the completed form for permission to comment at the GCB’s public hearing on the following day. [1279]*1279The aide did not otherwise respond to the l'equest for records, and did not forward the request to the GCB’s open-records officer.

On March BO, 2009, requestor deemed his records request denied pursuant to 65 P.S. § 67.901, which states: “If the agency fails to send the response within five business days of receipt of the written request for access, the written request for access shall be deemed denied.” Thereafter, re-questor filed a timely appeal from the deemed denial with the Office of Open Records (“OOR”). In opposition, the GCB took the position that there was no deemed denial from which an appeal could rightfully be taken under the RTKL because re-questor had not submitted a valid RTKL request to its open-records officer, and therefore, the GCB had no duty to respond concerning the records requested. The OOR disagreed, concluding that the request was not defective under the RTKL, and that the GCB’s failure to respond did, in fact, constitute a deemed denial. Further, because the GCB had not offered any substantive defense to the records request, the OOR ordered the GCB to release the records within thirty days.

On appeal, the Commonwealth Court, sitting en banc and dividing 4-3, affirmed the OOR’s decision with respect to the validity of the records request, but vacated the OOR’s order and remanded the matter for review of the records requested and a proper determination as to whether access to those records is properly granted or denied under the RTKL. Pennsylvania Gaming Control Bd. v. Office of Open Records, 48 A.3d 503 (Pa.Cmwlth.2012) (hereinafter “PGCB ”). The court majority focused its inquiry upon the second and third sentences of Section 703, which provide: “A written request must be addressed to the [designated] open-records officer.... Employees of an agency shall be directed to forward requests for records to the open-records officer.” In so doing, the court held that the first of these two sentences “means simply that written requests must be ‘directed’ to the open-records officer_” PGCB, 48 A.3d at 509. In reaching this conclusion, the court stated: “it is hard to believe that the legislature was concerned with the niceties of the written request salutation.... The real purpose of ‘addressed to the open-records officer’ is to ensure that the re-questor does not shop around the agency for an employee sympathetic to his request.” Id. at 508-09. In the court majority’s view, the word “addressed” is synonymous with the word “directed,” and “[t]his is why the statute contains the provision that employees are ‘directed’ to forward requests to the open-records officer.” Id. at 509. Finally, the court stated, without qualification, “We conclude that the General Assembly intended that state and local agencies should presume that written requests for records are Right-to-Know requests.” Id. at 510.

In a dissenting opinion joined by Judges McGinley and Cohn Jubelirer, Judge (now President Judge) Pellegrini disagreed with the rationale of the Commonwealth Court majority. In the dissenting view, “Section 703 provides that the requestor has to address the written request to the open records officer[,]” and that only written requests so addressed must be forwarded to the open-records officer by agency employees. Id. at 515 (Pellegrini, J., dissenting, joined by McGinley and Cohn Jubelirer, JJ.). According to that dissent, the Commonwealth Court’s Majority Opinion “would make an unaddressed request written on the back of a brown paper bag and given to a PennDot plow driver by the side of the road on a snowy winter night a valid right-to-know law request.” Id. at 516. [1280]*1280We allowed the GCB’s appeal to determine what constitutes a proper written request under the RTKL, sufficient to trigger the five-day deadline for the response and deemed denial provision of the statute, as this presents an .issue of first impression which is of statewide public importance.1

II.

The construction of Section 703 is a matter of statutory interpretation presenting a pure question of law. Thus, our standard of review is de novo and our scope of review is plenary. Cozzone ex rel. Cozzone v. W.C.A.B. (PA Municipal/East Goshen Twp.), 621 Pa. 23, 73 A.3d 526 (2013). Section 703 provides in its entirety:

A written request for access to records may be submitted in person, by mail, by e-mail, by facsimile or, to the extent provided by agency rules, by any other electronic means. A written request must be addressed to the open-records officer designated pursuant to section 502. Employees of an agency shall be directed to forward requests for records to the open-records officer. A written request should identify or describe the records sought with sufficient specificity to enable the agency to ascertain which records are being requested and shall include the name and address to which the agency should address its response. A written request need not include any explanation of the requester’s reason for requesting or intended use of the records unless otherwise required by law.

(Emphasis added).2

The GCB argues as follows. The Commonwealth Court erred by holding that requestor’s email to a GCB press aide constituted a RTKL request triggering the procedures and remedies of the RTKL in spite of requestor’s failure to conform to the RTKL by addressing the request to the GCB’s right to know officer. In the RTKL, the General Assembly prescribed a clearly-delineated framework for receipt, review, and response to records requests.

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Bluebook (online)
103 A.3d 1276, 628 Pa. 163, 2014 Pa. LEXIS 2928, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/commonwealth-v-office-of-open-records-pa-2014.