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Pennsylvania State Senate
04/19/2024 09:35 PM
Pennsylvania State Senate
https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/Legis/CSM/showMemoPublic.cfm?chamber=S&SPick=20170&cosponId=21524
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Senate Co-Sponsorship Memoranda

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Senate of Pennsylvania
Session of 2017 - 2018 Regular Session

MEMORANDUM

Posted: December 20, 2016 03:44 PM
From: Senator Patrick J. Stefano
To: All Senate members
Subject: Public Notice Prior to Signing Collective Bargaining Agreements
 
In the spirit of openness and transparency, I will be reintroducing Senate Bill 645, legislation to provide public notice of collective bargaining agreements prior to approval. Taxpayers have the right to know how their hard earned money is being spent. Public employers across the commonwealth currently negotiate contracts costing billions of dollars without any public review or oversight.

My legislation will require any proposed collective bargaining agreement be made available on the public employers’ publicly accessible Internet website within 48 hours. An agreement must be posted online two weeks prior and thirty days following the signing of the collective bargaining agreement. The posting shall include the following information:
  1. A statement of the terms of the proposed collective bargaining agreement;
  2. An estimate of the costs to the public employer associated with the agreement.
Proposed collective bargaining agreements and any documents presented by the public employer or received from the employee organization in the course of collective bargaining are to be public records subject to the Right-to-Know Law.

Taxpayers have a vested interest in the labor negotiations between public employers and their employees and deserve the right to review contract agreements. Requiring an online posting of the proposed collective bargaining agreements is a straightforward reform to advance government transparency and ensure taxpayer money is spent effectively.

Previous co-sponsors of this legislation include: SCARNATI, CORMAN, FOLMER, ALLOWAY, EICHELBERGER, VOGEL, WAGNER, AUMENT, WHITE, BARTOLOTTA AND HUTCHINSON.

I ask you to please join me in co-sponsoring this important piece of legislation. If you have any questions regarding this information, please contact Mark Fetzko (mfetzko@pasen.gov) of my office.


Introduced as SB168