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Pennsylvania House of Representatives
https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/Legis/CSM/showMemoPublic.cfm?chamber=H&SPick=20150&cosponId=17931
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House of Representatives
Session of 2015 - 2016 Regular Session

MEMORANDUM

Posted: March 31, 2015 02:07 PM
From: Representative Matt Gabler and Rep. Fred Keller, Rep. Tommy Sankey
To: All House members
Subject: Public Notice Prior to Signing Collective Bargaining Agreements
 
In the spirit of openness and transparency, I will be introducing legislation to provide public notice of public employee 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 public employee collective bargaining agreement to be made available on the public employers’ publicly accessible Internet website within 48 hours. The proposed 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

This legislation also establishes that 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 details of negotiations between public employers and their collective bargaining units, because they will be paying the bill. The public should have the right to review proposed agreements before they are signed. 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.



Introduced as HB1075