Recent Pennsylvania Office of Open Records (OOR) decisions seem to me to imply that any citizen can get on demand whatever contract package a school board has officially offered to a teachers union during negotiations. But, as far as I know, there’s been no test case on this specific issue.
The Pennsylvania Right to Know Act says that public agencies, including school districts, bear the burden of proof in keeping almost any “record” secret — even if their authors intended for them to be read by only a few people. Although the law makes exceptions for several classes of “predecisional” documents — e.g., memos relating to pending lawsuits — the OOR has been whittling away at these exceptions.
Consider, for example, background data on a proposed budget. In the Unionville-Chadds Ford SD, a former school board member, Keith Knauss, wanted to see the current version of a budget briefing book he’d received when he was a board member. The district denied his request, arguing that the briefing book was predecisional. (Mr. Knauss’s disagreements with his local board, for which he is now a candidate, were the subject of an earlier post on this blog.)
The OOR rejected the district’s argument, partly because board members had mentioned the briefing book in a public meeting in support of the proposed budget — which no one doubted was a public document. The OOR added that the district could withhold specific material dealing solely with “strategy,” as distinct from factual data. (Knauss v. Unionville Chadds Ford SD, AP 2009 0443, 07/13/09.)
That logic could well apply to contract negotiations, which set in concrete at least half of districts’ annual budgets. Strategy memos preceding an actual offer are self-evidently “predecisional,” as are tentative, “what-if?” proposals made during negotiations. But giving a union a formal, potentially binding offer means that the board has already made a decision. If the union says, “OK, we accept,” the board can’t reply, “Hey! That offer we made to you was just a little predecisional noodling. How about we now offer you something less?”
Of course, the real point is that citizens shouldn’t have to ask the OOR for help in seeing for these kinds of contract offers in the first place. Boards should be posting them voluntarily on their websites.
