Office of the Governor v. Raffle

65 A.3d 1105, 2013 WL 1749563, 2013 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 124
CourtCommonwealth Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedApril 24, 2013
StatusPublished
Cited by27 cases

This text of 65 A.3d 1105 (Office of the Governor v. Raffle) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Office of the Governor v. Raffle, 65 A.3d 1105, 2013 WL 1749563, 2013 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 124 (Pa. Ct. App. 2013).

Opinions

[1107]*1107OPINION BY

President Judge PELLEGRINI.

The Pennsylvania Office of the Governor (Office) appeals from a Final Determination of the Office of Open Records (OOR) directing the Office to disclose to Andy Raffle (Requester) the address of Governor Tom Corbett’s Shaler Township residence and the middle names, counties of residence and government-issued telephone numbers of 39 Office employees. For the reasons that follow, we affirm in part and reverse in part.

Requester submitted a request to the Office under the Right-to-Know Law (RTKL)1 seeking “the address of the home in Shaler Township, Pennsylvania, that constitutes the domicile of Governor Tom Corbett,” and the full name, county of residence and government-issued telephone numbers of 56 Office employees. (Reproduced Record (R.R.) at la-2a). In its response letter, the Office made the following determinations:

• The Office denied the “request for ‘the address’ of the home in Shaler Township, Pennsylvania, that constitutes the domicile of Governor Tom Corbett ... because answering it would require the Office to make a legal determination as to whether such address[ ] constituted the ‘domicile’ of the Governor.” (R.R. at 4a). The Office stated that the address of the Governor’s residence is in Harrisburg, and denied any information about other places where he may reside under the personal security exception of the RTKL.2
• The Office denied the request for the employees’ counties of residence because “a balancing of one’s constitutional right to privacy and the public interest in disclosure is necessary before providing home addresses information, such as counties of residence, under the RTKL, based on Article 1, Sections 1 and 8, of the [Pennsylvania] Constitution, in the context of the personal security exception of the RTKL.” (R.R. at 5). The Office held that “[s]uch information is exempt in this instance, as its disclosure under the RTKL, to any requester, for any purpose, would be reasonably likely to result in a substantial and demonstrable risk to the personal security of the employees ... including identity theft.” Id. The Office further held that an employee’s county of residence is exempt from disclosure under the personal iden[1108]*1108tification information exception of the RTKL.3
• The Office refused to provide the middle names of the employees pursuant to the RTKL’s personal security exception.
• With respect to the request for all government-issued telephone numbers of the 56 Office employees, the Office provided Requester with land-line telephone numbers for each of those employees, but denied the request to the extent that it sought additional cellular and/or personal telephone numbers, citing both the personal identification information and personal security exceptions of the RTKL.

Requester appealed to the OOR seeking the information that was refused for 39 of the employees. As well as maintaining its previously enunciated legal contentions, the Office submitted to the OOR an affidavit of Eric Avakian (Avakian), its Chief Information Security Officer, attesting that the disclosure of home address information and full names increases the risk of social engineering attacks and identity theft. The OOR ordered the disclosure of all the requested records, finding as follows:

• That by requesting the Governor’s home address, Requester did not seek a legal conclusion as to whether the Governor’s Shaler Township home constitutes his “domicile,” but merely sought the Governor’s home address in Shaler Township. The OOR further explained that it has previously held that home addresses are not protected from disclosure under the Pennsylvania Constitution; that home addresses are specifically not protected under the personal identification information exception; that nothing in the affidavit of the Office’s Chief Security Officer, Avakian, led it to conclude that the disclosure of home addresses is reasonably likely to result in identity theft and fraud; and that all candidates for public office must file records with the Department of State specifying their residence, which are public records subject to disclosure. Similarly, the OOR found that the Office did not submit sufficient evidence to meet its burden of proof that employee counties of residence are exempt from disclosure.
• Regarding the middle names of county employees, the OOR stated that although “a person’s name is the type of information the Commonwealth Court held to be part of the ‘Holy Trinity’ that are reasonably likely to result in identity theft and fraud,” it does not read that holding to stand for the proposition that the disclosure of names alone presents a substantial and demonstrable risk of harm to the physical or personal security of an individual. (OOR’s June 13, 2012 Final Determination at 6).
• With respect to the requested telephone numbers, the OOR explained that it “has previously held that government-issued cellular numbers are not exempt from public disclosure.... Similarly, agency-issued telephone numbers for public officials to transact agency business cannot be considered anything other than public records. The OOR [1109]*1109concludes that the word ‘personal’ in ‘personal telephone numbers’ is not intended to apply to agency-issued telephone numbers assigned to specific public officials and public employees. Rather, the word ‘personal’ is intended to apply to telephone numbers not used for agency business. Had the General Assembly intended employee telephone numbers to be exempt from public disclosure, it would have specifically stated ‘employee telephone numbers’ instead of ‘personal telephone numbers.’ ” Id. at 7.

This appeal by the Office followed in which it advances the same position that it unsuccessfully advanced before the OOR.4

I.

Regarding disclosure of the Governor’s home address, in Office of the Lieutenant Governor v. Daniel Mohn, 67 A.3d 123, 2013 WL 1749552 (Pa.Cmwlth. No. 1167 C.D.2012, filed April 24, 2013), identical arguments were made regarding whether there was a constitutional right to privacy in general in home addresses and, based on a substantially similar affidavit, whether disclosure should be denied. We held, as we do here, that there was no constitutional right to privacy in a home address and that the personal security exemption does not preclude the release of government employees’ home addresses on the reasons advanced in the affidavit. We need not repeat the rationale, equally applicable here, as to the basis of that holding.5 Moreover, that rationale is equally applicable to the release of an employee’s county of residence if it is contained in a public record.

II.

Next, the Office argues that the middle names of Office employees are exempt from disclosure under the RTKL’s personal security exception. With respect to disclosure of middle names, Avakian stated the following in his affidavit to the OOR:

A person’s first, middle and last name is defined as a person’s full legal name.

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Bluebook (online)
65 A.3d 1105, 2013 WL 1749563, 2013 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 124, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/office-of-the-governor-v-raffle-pacommwct-2013.