PIAA files suit claiming it should not be subject to Pennsylvania's Right to Know Law

The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association is suing the commonwealth and the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records, alleging that it should not be subject to the state’s Right to Know Law.

The complaint, filed in Commonwealth Court on Friday, comes nearly 12 years after Pennsylvania’s Right to Know Law took effect and following what a PIAA attorney called a burdensome request. The PIAA has been considered a state-affiliated entity under the law since its inception, but it didn’t file a lawsuit over the designation until now.

“I’m not aware of too many circumstances where a law’s application was challenged 12 or more years down the road,” said Erik Arneson, executive director of Pennsylvania’s Office of Open Records.

But PIAA attorney Alan R. Boynton Jr. responded, “I think we’re seeing much broader and overbearing requests after the last couple of years. I think that’s what caused them to pull the trigger now.”

At a PIAA meeting Tuesday, Executive Director Robert Lombardi called certain recent requests “frivolous” and “obscene,” including one that had over 121 requests inside one filing.

“It serves no purpose. It pushed the envelope,” he said. “We want to be treated like every other association.”

In the complaint, the PIAA claims it is not, “nor has it ever been, either a commonwealth authority or entity.”

The lawsuit claims that the Right to Know Law singles out PIAA and violates the agency’s constitutional right of equal protection. The organization’s attorney wrote that the law imposes obligations and duties on it that are not imposed on any other interscholastic athletic or academic organization in Pennsylvania.

The lawsuit seeks to enjoin the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records from having jurisdiction over any matters relating to PIAA as a state-­affiliated entity. According to the office’s website, the PIAA has been a party to 17 Right to Know Law challenges.

Included from the start

When the state Legislature adopted the Right to Know Law in 2008, the PIAA was listed as a state-affiliated entity along with agencies such as the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, Game Commission, Fish and Boat Commission, Turnpike Commission, State System of Higher Education and Public Utility Commission.

But PIAA’s attorney wrote that it has never been an authority of any kind.

Of the agencies listed, the complaint said, all of them except PIAA were expressly created by legislation through the General Assembly.

The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association was founded in 1913 and filed articles of incorporation in 1978.

Lombardi said during the meeting Tuesday that when the Right to Know Law was passed, the PIAA didn’t know it had been lumped in with the other entities.

“That was one of those times that the budget was passed well after midnight. I think it was around 2 a.m. We learned subsequently that we were named in it,” he said.

Lombardi said the organization has worked hard administratively to get relief, to no avail.

“We wanted to work through the process and not go into court for a lot of reasons,” he said. “One, cost. Two, we didn’t want to give people the impression that we don’t feel that we adhere to these things. And we do. We feel that we should be treated like every other state association, including the principals and the superintendents, and they don’t seem to be named in there.”

PIAA receives state money indirectly

The PIAA claims in the lawsuit that it receives no funding from the state.

But Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, said that statement is disingenuous.

“I think that’s finessing the situation,” she said. “Money flows from the taxpayer to the school district and on to PIAA.

“There’s no question they’re funded by public money.”

The PIAA, she said, is made up of member school districts, and those school districts receive funding from taxpayers.

“The Legislature recognized the unique power the PIAA wields and the immense power they hold,” she said. “Public access and transparency must follow government function.

“What they do, how they’re funded and the power they exercise demand accountability.”

Arneson agreed.

“PIAA has a remarkable amount of control and influence over high school sports in Pennsylvania, and they are essential to that pursuit,” he said.

Arneson said the entity ought to be subject to the Right to Know Law.

But the lawsuit points out that PIAA has no powers granted to it by the legislature and that its rules apply only to members who choose to participate.

The PIAA always has complied with open records requests made of it, Boynton said, or explained the rationale for why it did not.

“When people made a reasonable request, we comply voluntarily,” he said.

Recent case raised concern

Boynton did not find the most recent request, on Nov. 2 by a Bucks County man, to be reasonable.

Simon Campbell submitted a 10-page request for records to the PIAA, seeking among other things: all monthly electronic bank statements from Dec. 1, 2013, to the present; independent audited financial statements in electronic form; and the fronts of all canceled checks for all financial accounts owned or operated by PIAA between June 1, 2019, and the present.

Boynton said that Campbell’s request amounts to every check issued by each of the 12 PIAA districts to every official that worked a game for a year — amounting to several thousand.

“It became a bit overbearing,” the lawyer said.

Campbell admits his request is a big one, but said he submitted it following a final determination from the Office of Open Records relative to copying costs for financial records requested from PIAA by The Daily Item, a newspaper in Sunbury.

“I took what The Daily Item wanted and wrapped it up ten-fold,” he said.

In what he characterized as his “position statement” attached to his records request, Campbell wrote that he wants to know what is going on with the millions of dollars of taxpayer-sourced money that flows into the PIAA.

He also questioned a previous statement by the organization that it shouldn’t be subject to the Right to Know Law.

“I want to understand why PIAA thinks it should be unaccountable to the public for any of that money by suggesting that PIAA not be included in the RTKL (Right to Know Law),” he wrote. “These districts may be responsible for their local finances, but they are all part of PIAA.”

In his request, Campbell demands everything in only electronic format, even going so far as to provide examples of how financial institutions can show canceled checks electronically when a person logs in to online banking.

“Ignorance is not a valid denial argument under the RTKL,” he wrote. “PIAA has a duty to retrieve what I seek if PIAA possesses or controls access to the records in the electronic medium that I seek them.”

‘He’s following the money’

Campbell, who is president for Pennsylvanians For Union Reform, is a prolific filer of open records requests. According to the Office of Open Records docket search page, he has been a party to 436 Right to Know Law cases.

Locally, he has filed challenges against Franklin Regional, North Allegheny, South Allegheny, Chartiers Valley, Elizabeth Forward and the Mt. Lebanon school districts.

Typically, Melewsky said, his requests revolve around getting lists of public employees, particularly of school districts.

“He’s following the money,” Melewsky said. “That’s why the Right to Know Law exists.”

Campbell called himself an activist who knows the tricks of the record-request trade.

‘Transparency is everything’

“I’m one of those people who does stuff for the sake of it,” he said. “Transparency in government is everything. Without transparency in government, we have corruption, period.”

When he saw the fight PIAA was having with The Daily Item, Campbell said he wanted to pick up the mantle for them.

“Instead of dealing with a little, noble newspaper, they have to deal with an 800-pound gorilla asking for 50 times the records,” Campbell said.

His organization’s website said that it “seeks to eliminate compulsory unionism in Pennsylvania while promoting transparency and efficiency in government for taxpayers.”

“He has a lot of problems with union structure,” Melewsky said. “There’s no question he requests a lot of records. The Right to Know Law allows the public to do that.”

Allowing a government agency to decide which requests are appropriate and which are not, Melewsky said, would be a slippery slope.

“The law requires access even if the agency doesn’t agree with it. That’s what’s true accountability.”