Corbett's Lawyer Orders State Staffers to Scrub Their Calendars to Prevent Open Records Requests

[JPZenger]

From the Allentown Morning Call's Harrisburg reporter, John Micek

http://blogs.mcall.com/capitol_ideas/2011/06/wednesday-morning-coffee-and-you-can-make-them-like-you.html

"So Much For The New Transparency. Some among you might recall that Corbett ran for office last year promising to make state government more accountable to the voters. Yeah ... right.

While appellate courts deal with right-to-know cases initiated by news organizations, administration attorneys are instructing executive branch employees to carefully consider the information they enter into their work calendars and to "regularly purge them of 'transitory' information," according to an internal memo obtained Tuesday by the AP.

The May 17 memo from First Executive Deputy General Counsel James Schultz says rulings by the state Office of Open Records on separate requests for the calendars of Corbett and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter have created "uncertainty" about what information in the electronic calendars might be deemed public under the state's open-records law.

According to the AP, the memo directs employees to "minimize the quantity and detail of information" they enter in the calendar and not to enter any notes. It also advises employees who put personal appointments on their calendars to delete them "as soon as they are finished or no longer needed" and not to keep phone numbers, home addresses or other personal information for themselves or others in the calendar."