Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: The Right-To-Know Law allows citizens to know, for example, how much the school superintendent gets paid, why a police officer was fired, how much the city pays for attorneys who contribute to the campaigns of council members. A perfect example: The Office of Open Records recently ruled that the Right-To-Know Law requires public disclosure of the tax or other incentives Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration has promised Amazon to set up its second headquarters in Pittsburgh.
The Right-To-Know Law is critical to the health of our commonwealth and was strengthened 10 years ago with a sweeping rewrite. Under the current law, all government records are presumed public, and when citizens are denied access, they can appeal to the independent Office of Open Records, which I started in 2008.