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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2017 - 2018
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | December 15, 2017 10:29 AM |
|---|---|
| From: | Representative Marguerite Quinn |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Aligning the Sunshine Act with the Right-To-Know Law |
| Currently, the Commonwealth’s Right-to-Know Law contains fairly robust protections concerning records which raise security concerns. This involves concerns regarding the physical security of a building, public utility, resource, infrastructure, facility or information storage system. Our Sunshine Act, which generally provides that government meetings are open to the public, also contains certain exceptions which allow topics to be discussed in executive session. It does not, however, have a specific exception allowing discussion of physical security or cybersecurity issues in executive session. This has the potential to result in an odd contrast, where the Right-to-Know Law protects security-related documents from public disclosure but the Sunshine Act requires discussion of those same issues at an open meeting. In the near future, I plan to introduce legislation which would amend the Sunshine Act to allow government bodies to go into executive session to discuss important matters related to physical security or cybersecurity. |
Introduced as HB2111