Fort Cherry School District has spent thousands of dollars in legal fees since 2009 in failed attempts to fight two separate requests from members of the public for financial data.
In both cases, the financial information was found to be public after the Fort Cherry Open Records Officer, Paul Sroka, who is also the district's business manager, rejected the requests in full or in part. Sroka's rulings were overturned by the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records, and subsequently, by the Washington County Court of Common Pleas.
Maiello, Brungo & Maiello, the financially strapped district's lawyers, filed another appeal for one of these cases on May 9 of this year with the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, even though the common pleas court judge who ruled against the district wrote explicitly in his decision that his ruling applied only to this case, and was not intended to set a legal precedent.
Under Pennsylvania's new Right-to-Know Law, which came into effect January 1, 2009, all state government records are assumed to be public unless specifically excluded under the law. Those requesting records are not required to explain why they want the records.
Fort Cherry most recently lost an appeal on May 11 in a case involving a request for W-2s and 1099s for 2008 and 2009 for district superintendent Robert Dinnen, business manager Paul Sroka, special education director Dawn Smith, and curriculum director Trish Craig.
Curiously, even though the original requester and the Office of Open Records had both withdrawn months before the appeal was to be heard in the Washington County Court of Common Pleas, the school district chose to go forward with the case.
Fort Cherry attorney Falco Muscante of Maiello, Brungo & Maiello stated in a letter to the county court judge presiding over the case, John DiSalle, that the school wanted to go forward with the appeal because “the issues raised have a reasonable likelihood of repetition...not only by the Fort Cherry School District, (but) by any public entity within Washington County.”
This case has cost Fort Cherry taxpayers at least $1,407, based on details of Maiello, Brungo & Maiello bills for Fort Cherry, obtained from the school district through Right-to-Know Law requests.
On April 11 of this year, Fort Cherry lost on appeal a case involving the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. In a June 16 article, the Tribune-Review reported that the district has spent over $12,290 in taxpayer money trying to win.
The case began when a Tribune-Review reporter, Robin Acton, requested five years of financial data from the school in September of 2009. The years requested were 2005-06, 2006-07, 2007-08, 2008-09, and 2009-10.
The data requested included the salary for all district employees, including “their base salaries and their actual salaries, including overtime payments for additional duties...”; and detailed records of district revenues and expenses, including all checks written, according to the letter sent to Sroka by Acton.
Sroka agreed in an email to provide the information as about 20,000 manually redacted printed pages, and asked the Tribune-Review to pay $5,000 up front.
Acton responded in an email she would “forward your unusual request for payment to my editors and our legal counsel,” and commented in a subsequent email that “most of these records should be available in an electronic format. We've done this before with other districts and agencies and haven't encountered similar requests.”
Sroka stated in an email that providing the data in this form meant the school would be creating new records, something not required under the Right-to-Know Law. Also, apparently the school was very confident that the data could not or should not be provided in electronic format, perhaps based on a letter from the district's Information Technology Coordinator, Jack Okorn, to the school's attorneys.
In this letter, dated October 9, 2009, Okorn said that the financial data requested was created and kept in two separate financial management software packages. Okorn stated that the older system, MUNIS, had “no electronic down load capabilities that we are aware of,” and that electronic redactions could not be made. He went on to say that the school's current software, Pentamation, allowed data to be output which could be imported into an Excel spreadsheet, but that in this format, “does not possess the ability to keep a potential end-user from altering any of the information.”
On November 30, 2009, the district allowed the Tribune-Review's certified computer examiner, W. Scott Ardisson of bit-x-bit LLC, to examine the MUNIS and Pentamation systems. According to the bit-x-bit website, the firm's clients include the state attorney general's office and Duquesne University. Ardisson demonstrated to school personnel that the requested information could in fact be supplied as redacted computer files for four of the five years requested.
Based on Ardisson's assessment and other information, Lucinda Glinn of the state Office of Open Records told Fort Cherry in a final determination to provide four of the five years requested as redacted computer files. Specifically, Glinn ruled that 2005-06 did not have to be provided electronically, but that MUNIS data for 2006-07 and 2007-08, and Pentamation data for 2008-09 and 2009-10, did have to be provided to the newspaper electronically.
Based on Ardisson's assessment and other information, Lucinda Glinn of the state Office of Open Records told Fort Cherry in a final determination to provide four of the five years requested as redacted computer files. Specifically, Glinn ruled that 2005-06 did not have to be provided electronically, but that MUNIS data for 2006-07 and 2007-08, and Pentamation data for 2008-09 and 2009-10, did have to be provided to the newspaper electronically.
In the determination, Glinn stated that “the downloading of records onto an electronic medium and utilizing functionality of the computer programs available...does not constitute creation of a record.” Glinn also noted that the Right-to-Know Law does not require agencies to provide data in an unalterable computer format.
Fort Cherry appealed the Office of Open Records ruling to the Washington County Court of Common Pleas and lost. In his decision, Washington County judge John DiSalle wrote that “Agencies are not required to permit the type of on-site inspection the School District permitted. However, in this instance an on-site inspection was permitted and...showed that it was possible to obtain the information electronically as requested.” The district has now filed an appeal with a higher state court.
Eight members of the nine member Fort Cherry School Board were asked in an email from an area taxpayer if they intend to allow the administration to pursue this case. Only the school board member the email was specifically directed to, Bev Schwab, replied, telling the taxpayer that she only knew what she was told, and that the taxpayer should not email her anymore.
In the course of the school board meeting on Monday, June 20, it became clear that the district has begun moving to a new financial management system, ProSoft. Sroka stated at the meeting that the only thing left to move is payroll.
The subject came up because board members Chris Lauff (Mt. Pleasant Township) and Elmo Cecchetti (McDonald Boro), inquired if a financial report of bills paid they had to review, which came from the new system, could be provided in a different order, such as account, as the old system had provided. Sroka made several different comments. Cecchetti asked Sroka to find out if the report could be provided in other orders, and to let the board know at a future meeting.
This writer wonders: will the district financial data the Tribune Review requested from the Pentamation and MUNIS systems continue to be available electronically now that the district is moving to a new system? And will the ProSoft system be depicted as inflexible and difficult to use?
ProSoft sales literature states that the financial management system "includes a user friendly report generator with 32 categories capable of generating thousands of reports," and "a memorized report feature that stores defined reports for future use." The sales literature also says that these highly customizable reports can be saved into standard computer file formats, which can be imported into programs such as Excel.
