1

2 COMMONWEALTH OF HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 3 APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE

4 MAIN CAPITOL 5 ROOM 140 HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA 6

7 BUDGET HEARING OFFICE OF OPEN RECORDS 8

9 WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2013 4:09 P.M. 10

11 BEFORE

12 HONORABLE WILLIAM F ADOLPH, JR., Majority Chairman 13 HONORABLE RYAN AUMENT HONORABLE 14 HONORABLE JIM CHRISTIANA HONORABLE 15 HONORABLE GORDON DENLINGER HONORABLE BRIAN ELLIS 16 HONORABLE GARTH EVERETT HONORABLE MAUREE GINGRICH 17 HONORABLE GLEN GRELL HONORABLE SE TH GRO VE 18 HONORABLE THOMAS KILLION HONORABLE DAVID MILLARD 19 HONORABLE DUANE MILNE HONORABLE MARK MUSTIO 20 HONORABLE HONORABLE BERNIE O ’NEILL 21 HONORABLE HONORABLE SCOTT PETRI 22 HONORABLE JEFF PYLE HONORABLE 23 HONORABLE JOSEPH MARKOSEK, Minority Chairman HONORABLE BRENDAN F. BOYLE 24 HONORABLE HONORABLE MICHELLE BROWNLEE 25 HONORABLE MIKE CARROLL 1 BEFORE: (cont’d)

2 HONORABLE H. SCOTT CONKLIN HONORABLE MADELEINE DEAN 3 HONORABLE DEBERAH KULA HONORABLE TIM MAHONEY 4 HONORABLE MICHAEL O ’BRIEN HONORABLE CHERELLE PARKER 5 HONORABLE JOHN SABATINA HONORABLE STEVEN SANTARSIERO 6 HONORABLE

7 ALSO PRESENT: 8 DAVID DONLEY, MAJORITY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR 9 RITCHIE LAFAVER, MAJORITY DEPUTY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR DAN CLARK, MAJORITY CHIEF COUNSEL 10 MIRIAM FOX, MINORITY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR BERYL KUHR, MINORITY LEGAL COUNSEL 11 HONORABLE 12 HONORABLE PAUL CLYMER HONORABLE HAL ENGLISH 13 HONORABLE MATT GABLER HONORABLE MARK GILLEN 14 HONORABLE R. HONORABLE RON MARSICO 15 HONORABLE HONORABLE 16 HONORABLE RICK SACCONE HONORABLE TODD STEPHENS 17 HONORABLE WILL TALLMAN HONORABLE MIKE TOBASH 18 HONORABLE MIKE TURZAI HONORABLE 19 HONORABLE MARK COHEN HONORABLE MARGO DAVIDSON 20 HONORABLE PAMELA DELISSIO HONORABLE 21 HONORABLE STEVE MCCARTER HONORABLE PHYLLIS MUNDY 22 HONORABLE JIM ROEBUCK

23 BRENDA J. PARDUN, RPR 24 P. O. BOX 278 MAYTOWN, PA 17550 25 717-426-1596 PHONE/FAX 1 INDEX

2 NAME PAGE

3 TERRY MUTCHLER 4 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR 4 OFFICE OF OPEN RECORDS

5 J. CHADWICK SCHNEE 32 ASSISTANT CHIEF COUNSEL 6 OFFICE OF OPEN RECORDS

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25 1 P R O C E E D I N G S

2 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you. I ’d like

3 to call to order the House Appropriations budget

4 hearing for the Office of Open Records. With us

5 today is the executive director Terry Mutchler.

6 Good afternoon.

7 MS. MUTCHLER: Hello, Mr. Chairman.

8 How are you?

9 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Nice to see you

10 again.

11 MS. MUTCHLER: As always. Thank you.

12 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: I think we have

13 everybody here. And we’d like to start the hearing

14 with your opening.

15 MS. MUTCHLER: Great. Thank you.

16 Well, Mr. Chairman and members of the

17 committee, today I ’m joined by Chadwick Schnee, our

18 assistant chief counsel.

19 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Terry, if you don’t

20 mind, you can lift that up and come right up close

21 t o you.

22 MS. MUTCHLER: Close enough now? How’s

23 that?

24 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: That’s much better.

25 MS. MUTCHLER: Well, members of the 1 committee and Mr. Chairman, thank you for the

2 invitation to come and talk to you. I know you

3 guys have had a long afternoon and we'll be very,

4 very short.

5 I'm joined today by Chadwick Schnee,

6 who is our assistant chief counsel. And I'm here

7 to just — I'm not going to belabor by re-reading

8 our — the written testimony that you have, but I'd

9 just like to give you a couple of highlights.

10 Since the doors opened at the Office of

11 Open Records, we have had an 89 percent increase in

12 our workload to the Office of Open Records since

13 you created this very strong law, and it continues

14 to grow.

15 Last year, we handled two thousand one

16 hundred eighty-eight appeals to the Office of Open

17 Records. That's in addition to two hundred legal

18 cases in the supreme court, the commonwealth court

19 and court of common pleas, about twenty thousand

20 inquiries to our office, hearings, mediations, and

21 over eight hundred Right-to-Know requests to us,

22 because we're also subject. We did this with six

23 appeals officers and one chief counsel.

24 Each year I come, I sort of feel like a

25 broken record, but I honestly can't present to the 1 committee what I think we have our hand on, because

2 the first year we had one thousand fifty-nine

3 appeals, and we’ve had an 89 percent increase since

4 then .

5 We operate right now on a budget,

6 thanks to you, of 1.374 million dollars, which was

7 an increase for us. The governor’s proposed budget

8 is 1.488 million, and we certainly appreciate that

9 increase offer to us in this way, but the reality

10 is that that would leave us with twenty-six

11 thousand dollars to run our office. That includes

12 copying, postage, trainings, office expenses.

13 I might add here that we are in a

14 unique situation, under this law. We are housed

15 within the Department of Commerce and Economic

16 Development, and it kind of gets weird sometimes.

17 We have to rule against them often in cases, or at

18 least have cases come before them in that way, but

19 they are actually very, very helpful to us in the

20 administrative end of this, and -- and they handle

21 our HR for us. They handle our payroll. They

22 handle a lot of our expenses, and they don’t charge

23 us for that. And so that’s something that I think

24 the committee should also be aware of as it

25 considers our increase and us being housed in 1 DCED .

2 We’re asking this year for the

3 committee to consider, given our workload and what

4 we need to do it, we are asking for an increase up

5 to 1.8 million dollars. Since I took this office

6 in 2008, I ’ ve said 1. 5 would cover it, and I

7 believed that. And we’ve been shooting for that.

8 But with the increased pension costs and the

9 increased costs, some of which you just heard about

10 in your last testimony here, sets of testimony,

11 really make this not doable for us.

12 And so, as we look toward Senate Bill

13 444 kind of rewriting some of what we do at the

14 Office of Open Records, we’re trying to just convey

15 to you that I know everybody comes and asks for

16 money. It’s hard to believe that we’re telling you

17 that we have an 89 percent increase in our

18 workload. It’s continuing to grow. And if you add

19 in Penn State, Temple, Lincoln, and Pitt on the

20 state-relateds to be covered under this law, the

21 workload is — I can’t even — I can’t even guess

22 how deep that workload is going to be.

23 I just want to take one moment to tell

24 you some of the issues that we see, because we get

25 asked these questions a lot. There is a lot of 1 hot-button issues that come before us. Home

2 addresses is a big one. Commercial fees, you know,

3 where companies use the Right-to-Know Law and then

4 sort of turn around and sell the information.

5 That's done on the backs of taxpayers, and that's a

6 big i ssue.

7 Inmates, we've had many discussions

8 with many members of the committee and other folks,

9 31 percent of the appeals that come to the Office

10 of Open Records come from inmates.

11 The largest portion still is citizens.

12 It's 59.

13 Media, for people that are interested,

14 only has 4 percent of what comes to the Office of

15 Open Records.

16 So, you know, there's issues that need

17 to be dealt with in this regard.

18 The last point I want to make is

19 there's a great misconception about the work that

20 we do. We're often accused, for lack of a better

21 work, of being an advocate and that we -- folks

22 often say that we advocate on behalf of citizens at

23 the expense of agencies. We're an advocate, but

24 we're an advocate for the Right-to-Know Law, and we

25 apply that as fairly and as evenly across the board 1 as we can. And, yes, it’s difficult to rule

2 against, you know, agencies, the governor’s office,

3 local agencies, but, I mean, that’s sort of the

4 nature of the beast here.

5 And so, as we move forward, we’re

6 asking for your help in — in two ways. Of course,

7 in the financial component, of increasing the -­

8 you know, our earmark to the office, but also in

9 being supportive of some legislative changes that

10 would, we think, help reduce -- help, actually, not

11 reduce, it would help make a more effective Right-

12 to-Know Law. And one of side perks to that, of

13 course, is reducing some of the workload that we

14 see.

15 And with that, I ’m very happy to answer

16 any particular questions you have in that regard.

17 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Okay. Thank you very

18 much .

19 So you’re really advocating some

20 legislative changes to the current law; is that

21 correct?

22 MS. MUTCHLER: Yes, we are advocating

23 some changes to that. We are in support of many of

24 the changes that many of the members here and the

25 other chamber have also put forward. Some would be 1 the commercial use, as you’re obviously very

2 intimately familiar with, changing some of those

3 requirements; perhaps setting up a different

4 mechanism for inmates to use the Right-to-Know Law

5 as other states do. Those are big ones.

6 There’s some procedural changes that

7 would help us, of course, as well, and we’ve

8 forwarded those forward to the appropriate

9 c o mmi t t e e s .

10 But, if this continues to grow, the

11 office -- I mean, you guys can look at the numbers,

12 and, you know, seven people doing twenty-two

13 hundred cases, and that’s not even the cases in

14 court, it’s — I don’t want to say it’s not doable,

15 because we’re doing it, but it’s — we’re doing it

16 with great strain.

17 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: And, you know, we’re

18 looking at the additional cost to the commonwealth.

19 MS. MUTCHLER: Sure.

20 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Okay? What is not on

21 this page is the additional cost to all the school

22 districts and all the municipal townships, local

23 governments out there.

24 MS. MUTCHLER: Absolutely.

25 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Whether it’s a small 1 little borough, whether it's a, you know, a big

2 city. And, you know, there's been a — which I

3 have always thought, is -- not the way the law was

4 intended, that commercial use, and, you know, I' ve

5 had legislation in. You know, my local tax

6 collector is still mad at me because it's —

7 MS. MUTCHLER: I know. She calls me

8 regularly.

9 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: I'm sure she will.

10 You know, I didn't get a Christmas card from her

11 this year.

12 But, you know, it's those common-sense

13 changes that we need to get done.

14 You know, could you give us a couple

15 examples of what inmates are requesting, and what

16 information are they requesting?

17 I mean, you have two thousand one

18 hundred eighty appeals; is that correct?

19 MS. MUTCHLER: Right.

20 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: And did you say that

21 that's -­

22 MS. MUTCHLER: And 31 percent of those

23 are from inmates. And, you know, you run a wide

24 range of what inmates ask for. Some — and, you

25 know, it's hard to say this with a straight face, 1 but some have filed Right-to-Know requests and they

2 want to know the type of underwear that -- that

3 guards are issued versus the type of undergarment

4 that they’re issued. You know, they want to know

5 the food content in the food that they’re being

6 served. Many of them are wanting their sentencing

7 orders.

8 You know, some of them, we’ve

9 discovered, just through our office, they’re asking

10 for stuff, they’re asking for copies of everything

11 on our website on the law, and what we realize is,

12 they’re asking, really, for paper, because they

13 want the flip side of the paper to use in that

14 regard.

15 But a lot of them ask for financial —

16 of them ask for financial information. Some of

17 them ask for policies related to their

18 incarceration. Some ask for proof that, you know,

19 or records related to their lawsuits or their

20 convictions, things like that. It’s quite a

21 panoply.

22 And what some other states have done

23 is -- and let me start by saying, I was not a fan

24 of this at the beginning, because I thought, well,

25 it’s a Right-to-Know Law and everybody should be 1 able to use it, and all those things, but when I

2 took a look at what some other states have done in

3 setting up a separate mechanism for inmates to

4 obtain information, it seems to work fairly well in

5 Texas and New York. And so they don’t use a Right-

6 to-Know Law context.

7 But that, Mr. Chairman, is some of the

8 things they’re asking for. Is there anything else

9 that you can think of that they have -- I mean,

10 that pretty much covers the -­

11 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Terry, the -­

12 coincidentally, coincidentally, you’re requesting a

13 31 percent increase over what the governor has

14 proposed, that exact same percentage of inmate

15 request s.

16 MS. MUTCHLER: I knew I should have

17 paid attention to -­

18 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: I mean -­

19 MS. MUTCHLER: I knew this. I knew

20 this. I didn’t know that.

21 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: But it is a

22 coincidence. So, if we could get a law through the

23 legislature, you know, which sometimes is very

24 difficult because the endless, endless amendments

25 that gets on these bills, but, seriously, 1 seriously, if have to amend that law to get back to

2 its original purpose. And, you know, I think it

3 was a — the objective of this law was fantastic.

4 MS. MUTCHLER: It is.

5 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: But it's created a

6 financial hardship for a lot of our little local

7 municipalities and school districts.

8 MS. MUTCHLER: Mr. Chairman, I share

9 that view. I think townships are particularly hard

10 hit, but I also think it's important, as the

11 committee reconsiders, you know, how it wants to

12 balance this, to remember the intent. And there's

13 a lot of good things that have come out of this

14 l aw.

15 Some of the success stories: A Right-

16 to-Know Law is what revealed a school district that

17 was continuing to pay three employees that had been

18 fired for several months. A Right-to-Know Law

19 request is what discovered that city officials were

20 spending tens of thousands of dollars on trips to

21 New Orleans, Orlando, you know, other places.

22 Another Right-to-Know Law revealed that an agency

23 had received a million-dollar donation. Some

24 Right-to-Know Laws have discovered that the food

25 preparation for the food that our kids are eating 1 in their school cafeterias is tainted, for lack of

2 a better phrase there.

3 So I encourage the committee to look at

4 ways to make sure that this becomes effective

5 without losing sight of the intent of a Right-to-

6 Know Law. I share your view.

7 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Terry, I agree with

8 you 10 0 percent.

9 Do you have any good stories to tell us

10 regarding inmates’ requests?

11 MS. MUTCHLER: Well, you know, the

12 underwear story was pretty funny, I thought. But,

13 no, I mean, we’ve had some folks who file and they

14 want to know -- there was one guy who just wanted

15 to know which police officer had shot him. But

16 there’s really — I can’t really point to — to any

17 that would advance the Right-to-Know Law. In fact,

18 some of the legislation that has come up and has

19 gone up to the courts has negatively affected the

20 procedural process of the Right-to-Know Law.

21 But we get -- you know, and along with

22 that, Mr. Chairman, I think it’s fair for your

23 members to know that, you know, there’s a lot of

24 folks that do use this law to harass public

25 officials. It happens. We see it regularly. It’s 1 not — it’s not a large number, but, you know, when

2 somebody’s filing three hundred Right-to-Know

3 requests in a three-month period, you want to say,

4 Could you get a hobby? But, you realize, this is

5 their hobby. And then if you dig a little deeper,

6 they’ve lost an election and they’re upset.

7 And so, you know, there is some

8 extremes with this. And my great hope is that, as

9 we take a look at rewriting this and also properly

10 considering the funding for the Office of Open

11 Records, that it can be with a common-sense,

12 middle-of-the-road approach, with a great eye

13 toward, if you include the state-relateds, I don’t

14 know exactly how the Office of Open Records

15 operates.

16 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: I know Senator

17 Pileggi was the original author of the bill. Are

18 you working with Senator Pileggi? Does he have

19 intentions of reopening this -­

20 MS. MUTCHLER: I can’t speak for what

21 his intention is other than to say that we worked

22 very closely for several months on — they’ve been

23 very open to our suggestions on how to change this

24 procedurally and just kind of taking sort of a "now

25 that we’ve had a chance to kick the tires" here and 1 see what’s really happening, they have welcomed our

2 input. This committee has as well. And many of

3 the -- all of the lawmakers that we have dealt with

4 have felt -- you know, share the concerns that

5 you’re raising and are very receptive to our input.

6 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Yeah. I mean, I

7 remember your testimony last year, and, you know,

8 you were quite convincing and the legislature

9 granted your request -­

10 MS. MUTCHLER: It did.

11 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: — for an increase.

12 This 31 percent increase, could you

13 tell us exactly who you’re hiring?

14 MS. MUTCHLER: Sure. Well, right now,

15 if we were to receive this increase -- last year,

16 as you know, you gave us an additional amount of

17 funding that permitted us to hire two additional

18 staffers. These are primarily lawyers that — in

19 fact, they’re all lawyers that we’re hiring, so

20 that they can process this and be in court for us.

21 One thing I think the committee needs

22 to be aware of is the fact that the Office of Open

23 Records is still in temporary office space. I

24 can’t believe I ’m saying that five years into a

25 six-year term, but we are. And the move is 1 underway and money has also been allocated for

2 that .

3 We're hiring — we're looking to hire

4 young lawyers as well as mid-level lawyers that are

5 able to appear for us, whether it's in, you know,

6 handling a Right-to-Know Law request, going out and

7 doing trainings, as we've done for many members of

8 the committee, or appearing in the supreme court.

9 Did I -- were you looking for something

10 more specific there, Mr. Chairman?

11 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: That's pretty

12 specific. But I want to thank you for the job that

13 you're doing. We need to — we need to amend the

14 current law just for abuses, that's all.

15 MS. MUTCHLER: Well, and,

16 Mr. Chairman -­

17 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: You know, because

18 it's got a lot of good results, you know. I'll be

19 the first one to defend it. But, you know,

20 no law is perfect.

21 MS. MUTCHLER: Sure. And one thought

22 with that is, as you take a look at this, I just

23 want to — don't want to paint too much of a

24 negative picture one way. I just want to give you

25 one example to let you know that it's — that while 1 local governments do suffer, they also deal out

2 quite a bit of nonsense related to this law as

3 well. And I hate to be so blunt. But somebody

4 filed a Right-to-Know request with a particular

5 city in the state. The city responds and denies

6 it. The requester, a nonlawyer, appeals to the

7 Office of Open Records, and the city filed an

8 unauthorized practice of law asking us to block

9 this citizen’s appeal because they’re not a lawyer

10 to come before our office.

11 So I offer that as just, you know,

12 there’s extremes on both sides of this, right? And

13 so I couldn’t make this stop. But, you know, I

14 just hope that we can keep that middle of the road,

15 exactly as you talked about, and if we can be

16 helpful in that, we’re happy to do it.

17 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you.

18 Chairman Markosek.

19 REP. MARKOSEK: Sounds like these

20 inmates have too much time on their hands.

21 MS. MUTCHLER: You wouldn’t get an

22 argument here, Mr. Chairman.

23 REP. MARKOSEK: This is all very

24 interesting. And we’ll try to help you as best we

25 can. 1 And I really -- Chairman Adolph pretty

2 much answered all -- asked all of my questions, and

3 I think — I appreciate your answers.

4 And I guess, maybe just to, you know,

5 follow up a little bit more on that is, to the

6 extent that you can, I know you’re busy with all

7 your huge workload, you know, provide us, you know,

8 any kind of language, you know, changes in the law

9 that you feel would be helpful. I think that would

10 be something we would be willing to try to help you

11 with as well as the budget.

12 MS. MUTCHLER: We’re very happy to get

13 that to you. And thank you.

14 REP. MARKOSEK: Sure.

15 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you.

16 Rep. Gordon Denlinger.

17 REP. DENLINGER: Thank you,

18 Mr . Chairman.

19 And good afternoon.

20 MS. MUTCHLER: Good afternoon.

21 REP. DENLINGER: A couple questions in

22 follow up to some of what the chairman was getting

23 to. And I ’m interested in knowing about your

24 statutory guidelines in terms of requests that are

25 predatory in nature. We kind of were at the edges 1 o f that.

2 If information requests are perceived

3 by you to be predatory in nature, and let's put a

4 finer point on that and say for juveniles, do you

5 have the right to deny that type of request?

6 MS. MUTCHLER: Well, what happens in

7 this regard, Representative, is this, we handle -­

8 we're a quasi-judicial agency that handles the

9 appeal. So if someone filed a Right-to-Know

10 request for the local city council asking for

11 juvenile records of some sort and they denied it

12 and the requester wanted to come to us, we take a

13 look to determine whether the agency properly

14 denied on it .

15 Most information related to minors is

16 off limits. The statute itself says that you can't

17 get — like on home addresses, you can't get home

18 addresses of minors.

19 But there's a lot of material that's

20 available in today's world, and we do take that —

21 we look at that staff very, very closely. We

22 normally don't see a situation where an agency has

23 made a mistake related to a minor.

24 We see this a lot with school

25 districts. A lot of times people will come, even 1 parents, and they’ll want to get a copy of their -­

2 you know, why their kid -- we get this a lot,

3 actually, why is their kid not listed as -- why is

4 their child not listed as gifted. And they want

5 the paperwork related to that. You know, under

6 FERPA and some of the educational restriction laws,

7 you’re not going to get that. And we see many

8 related to that. And I can’t think of a case that

9 we would have even thought of overturning in that

10 regard. So we uphold the agency.

11 And we pay particular attention -- if

12 our appeal -- our appeals officers are trained that

13 if they see anything that even smells like a

14 personal security issue or something that’s dealing

15 with minors, I ’ m personally made aware of that so

16 that we can, then, try to work with the agency to

17 make sure that there’s enough protection here.

18 REP. DENLINGER: That’s kind of where I

19 wanted to go, because I know, in the course of

20 interacting with a party, you know, if, upon

21 delivery of whatever information the person says,

22 Great, now I ’ m really going to get that person with

23 this, do you have the right to notify authorities?

24 And do you ever do that?

25 MS. MUTCHLER: Well, we have, many 1 times, notified authorities. At least three that I

2 can think of off the top of my head.

3 One very powerful example, it didn't

4 involve a minor, but someone filed a Right-to-Know

5 request seeking public records of a teacher out in

6 the western part of the state. And unfortunately,

7 the district ignored the request, and what that

8 meant was, that he had an automatic right to appeal

9 to us. So he appealed to us, and what he attached

10 to his Right-to-Know request was a copy of an

11 expired Protection from Abuse Order. And he said,

12 "This is expired, so you can see I'm no longer a

13 threat." Genius, that he was.

14 And the problem for us was, we

15 immediately tried to make contact, but the school

16 district wouldn't — they ignored us. I did

17 everything short of sending a smoke signal to say,

18 you know, make a constructive argument here of a

19 personal security. Because one thing that's

20 important for the legislature to understand is, the

21 Office of Open Records cannot make an argument for

22 an agency. If the agency says, it's — it's not

23 available to you under this exemption or this

24 exemption, and say they miss a big exemption, I

25 don't have the right to — the Office of Open 1 Records doesn't have the statutory authority to

2 say, "Oh, you missed this one. So, go ahead and do

3 it." And I think that's actually a good setup.

4 But we, in that situation, I'll be very

5 candid. I'll be very candid with the public about

6 this. I was not going to order release of that

7 information, even if it meant we had to ignore the

8 question, and let them go to court. It's an

9 extreme. I don't really want to say that, but that

10 is the reality, and that's how seriously we take

11 i t .

12 We were able to work and get the

13 district to respond, in a — at that time, it was

14 appropriate, even though it was late, and we did

15 not order release of that information.

16 But you raise a collateral issue that

17 is extremely important, and that is third-party

18 notice under this law. And what that means is, if

19 somebody files a Right-to-Know request and they ask

20 for records, let's say that the party about who —

21 you know, like somebody files a Right-to-Know

22 request with the city of Philadelphia, and they

23 want records related to -- that contain information

24 related to a city worker, the question becomes,

25 does that city worker have a right to know that 1 these records have even be sought.

2 It's been a huge issue in the

3 legislature — in the courts. And what we have

4 done, at the Office of Open Records, is we've

5 instituted a policy to say, if records are related

6 to third parties and that request comes, we order

7 the agency to notify the third party. But, of

8 course, nothing's ever simple. And no good deed

9 goes unpunished. And we've had pushback even from

10 state officials saying, What's your authority to

11 require us to do this?

12 So we're now battling this out in the

13 courts, trying to take that common-sense approach

14 to say, Look, people need to know when somebody's

15 asking about their records in certain instances,

16 because an employer may not know that there's a

17 protection order. An employer may not know some of

18 the background of a, you know, very terrible

19 divorce or something like that.

20 And I think we have -- we, at the

21 Office of Open Records, pay attention to that, but

22 there is a great risk there, and I think that that

23 is now being addressed by the courts. They're

24 deeply concerned about this, as they should be, as

25 we are. And my hope is we can make sure that 1 that's tied up in some fashion.

2 REP. DENLINGER: And just as a closing

3 comment, can you share with us which state agencies

4 have really taken the other side of that case and

5 are pushing on that?

6 MS. MUTCHLER: Sure. Well, I'll be

7 candid with you, we had some issues at the

8 beginning with the governor's office related to

9 this and their agencies. And let me just inject

10 here, before it goes any further, we've made great

11 strides in having a collaborative relationship with

12 them, so I think we're — I think we're on the

13 right track. But many state agencies, you know,

14 we've had that initial pushback as to what our

15 authority is, and, candidly, we're even — you

16 know, one of the things that we're trying to

17 formulate now, under this law, is, our ability at

18 the Office of Open Records to see a record before a

19 determination is made. And so what that — you

20 know, we get a lot of pushback about this.

21 As a quasi-judicial agency, sometimes

22 you really can't tell if the document is

23 predecisional or if it's — if it's something that

24 should be exempt. So what we asked is to do an

25 in-camera review, that none of the parties see, 1 just we see. And we get tremendous — we’re, in

2 fact, in court over that, over whether we have the

3 authority to do it.

4 We just argued that in the commonwealth

5 court. And I ’ve said this to the court, I will say

6 it here: I think that if the Office of Open

7 Records doesn’t have the ability to review a record

8 and determine whether it’s exempt, I think we

9 become of noneffect.

10 REP. DENLINGER: Okay. Well, thank you

11 for bringing us up to speed on some of the

12 challenges that you face. We appreciate that.

13 MS. MUTCHLER: Thank you.

14 REP. DENLINGER: Thank you,

15 Mr. Chairman.

16 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you,

17 Representative.

18 Chairman Cohen.

19 REP. COHEN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

20 I — I agree with a lot of what has been said. I

21 think, if you look at the law, I think maybe -­

22 maybe the language, what’s available, can be a

23 little bit less sweeping, and maybe the details on

24 how you actually get the information could be

25 improved. 1 I had a case, my staff was interested

2 in the Camelot contract. And we tried to get that

3 from the governor's office. And — and — it took

4 forty-five days till after the request was made for

5 us to get the information that the chief counsel's

6 office of the governor -- I' m sorry, that the

7 governor's open record officer did not have it,

8 perhaps we could try the governor's general counsel

9 office. I don't know how often that comes up, that

10 people just don't have the records; they hide it.

11 I guess somebody who's determined to get the

12 records perhaps should file numerous requests with

13 numerous agencies to get that. I — I'm not

14 certain what will be done under that circumstance.

15 MS. MUTCHLER: Well, Representative,

16 what normally happens in this regard is, is that

17 many agencies have trouble having a handle on all

18 of their records. And so we try to preach sort of

19 records management.

20 There are many times when an agency

21 will respond and say the records don't exist. That

22 happened at the very beginning of this law quite a

23 bit. The Office of Open Records requires an agency

24 that is going to assert that the record doesn't

25 exist to do an affidavit, under the penalty of 1 perjury, that they have searched in good faith for

2 the record and the record doesn’t exist.

3 It’s been a very effective tool for us

4 because hundreds of records that previously were -­

5 couldn’t be found can be found.

6 You know, one thing I would say is,

7 is -- in this regard, is that you got a forty-

8 five-day turnaround is actually pretty good under

9 this law, candidly. And, you know, we see a lot -­

10 you know, there’s a huge volume. I know it’s — I

11 know that I ’ m one to many times talk about the

12 volume, but if you take a look at what the previous

13 governor and this governor has dealt with, they’ve

14 had over six thousand Right-to-Know requests to

15 their agency. We’ve only seen about three hundred

16 appeals. So you could argue that, you know,

17 without — you could argue that that’s a pretty

18 good transparency track record. It’s just that

19 then when we get into the three hundred, you know,

20 we’re — everybody’s in the weeds.

21 But there’s a lot of — as you all know

22 from your constituents and your local agencies,

23 there is a bigger requirement for them to perform

24 with less, and so under these, what an citizen can

25 do, or anyone that seeks this, is ask for the 1 record, try to work with the agency, but the

2 turnaround time is still going to be probably about

3 thirty-five to forty-five days, sometimes even

4 longer than that.

5 REP. COHEN: So the five days in the

6 law doesn’t really mean very much.

7 MS. MUTCHLER: I ’m sorry?

8 REP. COHEN: The five days in the

9 law -­

10 MS. MUTCHLER: Well, the five days in

11 the law, that’s an issue for us in two ways. First

12 of all, it requires an agency -- when an agency

13 receives a Right-to-Know request, they are required

14 to respond, in writing, within five -- within five

15 business days. They either have to give the

16 record, deny the record, or invoke the thirty-day

17 extens i on.

18 The issue that’s now come up with that

19 is, we just — the governor’s office — it was the

20 Office of General Counsel versus the Office of Open

21 Records, on what constitutes the five days. The

22 courts just ruled in the governor’s favor to now

23 say — the governor’s office’s to now say the five

24 days doesn’t start ticking when the agency receives

25 the request. The five days starts ticking when the 1 Open Records' officer receives the request. And

2 there's no mechanism for us to monitor. You know,

3 in most instances, it's when the mail comes in.

4 But now it's going to be further delayed.

5 We' ve just taken this up to the supreme

6 court to ask for some clarification in this regard,

7 to see if we can get it back to what it seemed to

8 be your intent was, which was the five business

9 days .

10 At the end of the five business days,

11 if they invoke the thirty, they either have to give

12 the records or deny the records. If they deny the

13 records, they have to tell the citizen that they

14 have a right to appeal to us and what that

15 procedure i s.

16 REP. COHEN: Okay. And I would think

17 that they have some duty at least to say where the

18 records are. I mean, it shouldn't be that, you

19 know, you see — it's like a shell game. "Well,

20 no, they're not our records. Why don't you go try

21 a whole bunch of other agencies. Maybe it's their

22 records."

23 MS. MUTCHLER: The only duty that I

24 would see under this law -- the two duties that

25 I would say an agency have would be they have a 1 duty to -- to do a full -- you know, a good faith

2 search. And if they don't have the record, then

3 they would be required to — if it's a third-party

4 record, they'd be required to go get that.

5 But I think my assistant chief counsel

6 has a thought here.

7 MR. SCHNEE: Yeah, actually,

8 Chairman Cohen, under Section 502(b)(1) of the

9 Right-to-Know Law, there's actually a specific

10 requirement that an agency's Open Records' officer,

11 the guy that's supposed to respond to you, has a

12 duty to direct your request to either people

13 appropriate in its agency or appropriate people in

14 other agencies that might have the records.

15 Now, there's not always going to be a

16 situation where they know where the records are,

17 but there is a statutory duty that our Open

18 Records' officer at the Office of Open Records, you

19 know, tries his best to direct, you know, the

20 request to whatever agency we think might have the

21 records.

22 REP. COHEN: Okay. Well, I -- I think

23 that all has to be fleshed — fleshed out more. I

24 certainly don't agree that — that if like six

25 thousand requests are filed and only three 1 hundred are followed by lawsuits, that's — that's

2 a really great job. I mean, not everybody is

3 consumed by this search for information. For many

4 people, if they don't have the position, they've

5 got other things to do. And if they want the

6 information, they want it now or in a reasonable

7 time period -­

8 MS. MUTCHLER: They want -­

9 REP. COHEN: — and they're not

10 interested in beginning a long period of

11 litigation, so maybe they get the information in

12 two years.

13 MS. MUTCHLER: One thing that we try to

14 encourage agencies to do along those very lines is

15 put as much public information up on their website

16 as possible. There's a direct correlation between

17 that and reducing Right-to-Know requests.

18 And, you know, I think that the

19 legislature looking at some of these overall issues

20 will, hopefully, be resolved when we -- when we

21 take a look at rewriting the Right-to-Know Law.

22 REP. COHEN: Thank you very much,

23 Mr . Chairman.

24 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you.

25 Rep. Gingrich. 1 REP. GINGRICH: Thank you,

2 Mr . Chairman.

3 Good to see you, madam director.

4 MS. MUTCHLER: As well, thank you.

5 REP. GINGRICH: Counsel, thanks for

6 being here.

7 I must say, Terry, that I really

8 appreciate your communication style. I never have

9 to unravel what you're telling us. So thank you.

10 MS. MUTCHLER: Thank you.

11 REP. GINGRICH: Thank you very much.

12 And it is amazing, not surprising but

13 amazing, to look at the increase of volume as we've

14 been over these last five years, all of us

15 recognizing the value of the creation of the Open

16 Records department. We've got some tweaks,

17 obviously, going on. And you've been extremely

18 helpful to me in my district. And I look at what

19 you're asking for, when we're looking at — these

20 are budget hearings on the budget numbers -- and

21 the money that you're looking for is directed to

22 professional staff.

23 MS. MUTCHLER: Yes.

24 REP. GINGRICH: Mostly lawyers. I get

25 that. When I'm hearing all of these appeals and 1 the number of times it's going to the courts, we

2 don't want to get lost out there in the trenches

3 with the operational side.

4 MS. MUTCHLER: Um-hum.

5 REP. GINGRICH: You're going to be

6 dealing with a -- a lesser amount of money on the

7 operational side. You've got, you know, hearings.

8 You've got travel. You've got those essential

9 trainings.

10 How are you going to handle that part?

11 I see where you need the money for professional

12 staff.

13 MS. MUTCHLER: Well, part of the

14 that — first of all, I appreciate your remarks.

15 And I really appreciate that you're speaking right

16 to the heart of what we talk about every day at the

17 office and how are we going to do this.

18 With hiring -- with hiring additional

19 staff, those staff are the folks that will help us

20 in terms of doing the trainings that the law

21 requires us to do, going to court and handling

22 that. The operational costs of — you know, some

23 of the postage, the travel, all of those things,

24 we've woven in. And that's why when we've come

25 back and said, if you go with what the governor has 1 proposed for us at the 1.4, twenty-six thousand

2 dollars in operating costs won’t do it. If we have

3 the 1. 8 or something very close to the 1.8, that

4 would cover our professional staff and also it will

5 cover what we know is going to be a huge amount of

6 trainings when we change the law.

7 As soon as we change the law, we’re

8 going to have to be in every community around the

9 state. And we try to do that through webinars and

10 through other things, but we have to get out there

11 and work with the local agencies and the townships

12 and things like that.

13 The move is also part of our

14 operational expenses, which is why we’ve — you

15 know, we need to be in a permanent space. We’re in

16 the back of a library right now. And it’s fine

17 space in the sense of — but we’ve outgrown it.

18 We’ve — you know, even our staff can’t all be in

19 the office pretty much at the same time because of

20 that. And so we believe that with the 1.8, that

21 would help us meet the professional needs of hiring

22 staff. With that, of course, comes some

23 administrative staff to process these things, and

24 to meet the postage, the -- you know, the human

25 resources angle, the things that we’re now going to 1 end up being charged for as an independent agency.

2 Does that answer your question?

3 REP. GINGRICH: Well, it does. I don’t

4 know where you’re going to put these new people,

5 since you said you can’t —

6 MS. MUTCHLER: We’re moving. So we’re

7 moving to what was an old bookstore in the Keystone

8 Building, and we will have space there. And my

9 hope is, that before my term ends next year, that

10 we will have that permanent space and have that

11 solidified so that we can continue to build.

12 REP. GINGRICH: It looks like you’re

13 going in the right direction to be able to keep up

14 with the volume of work. And there’s been a lot of

15 conversation about changing the laws, as if it’s a

16 foregone happening, which is a good thing.

17 Identifying what we need to do, needs to be

18 narrowed down.

19 I know, in my district, and probably in

20 a lot of others, we’ve dealt with some of the

21 significant inmate requests, which go from

22 underwear to many other things. But the other

23 issue that I ’ ve dealt an awful lot with -- It

24 should say my municipalities have, are with some of

25 the commercial targeting and the way the access to 1 that information is being, you know, distributed.

2 And somebody is making a heck of a lot of money off

3 of potential marketing sales.

4 Is that part of one of the areas that

5 you've identified that we could address

6 statutorily?

7 MS. MUTCHLER: Yes. And very early on,

8 the chairman of this committee and I had

9 discussions about the fact that folks were using

10 this law for a commercial use. Most states in the

11 nation have specific language that says, you know,

12 this is not intended for commercial use.

13 The federal Freedom of Information Act,

14 similar to this in some ways, sets up a bifurcated

15 fee system. If you're a commercial user, you're

16 going to pay differently. You're going to pay for

17 the research of the information, even though it's

18 public record. And you're going to pay a different

19 cost associated with that.

20 What we've identified in our — in the

21 last year, 8 percent of our twenty-one hundred and

22 eighty-eight appeals, 8 percent were from

23 companies. What does that look like? In a real

24 way, it looks like people coming in and trying to

25 get tax records and then turning around and selling 1 i t .

2 People come in and they want to get —

3 and, you know, it's capitalism. It's all part of

4 it. But they want to get a list of — we've had

5 examples of they wanted to get a list of everybody

6 that owns a — that has a dog license. They were

7 running a grooming business. We get a lot dealing

8 with people who want information about building

9 permits for pools. You know, the guy that sells

10 the pool lining. I mean, you — you — the list

11 goes on.

12 While we'll certainly do whatever the

13 legislature sends us to do, I do think that there

14 is a strong argument to be made that that should

15 not be done on the backs of taxpayers or of local

16 agencies at such a time when they are so crimped

17 for money and for staff, and do I think that that

18 deserves a fair look by the legislature to say

19 there's got to be a better way to do this.

20 REP. GINGRICH: You won't get any

21 argument from me. And you know you and I have

22 talked about that before.

23 S o thank you.

24 MS. MUTCHLER: Thank you.

25 REP. GINGRICH: And don't ever pick up 1 any of that double-speak stuff.

2 MS. MUTCHLER: I'll try not to. Thank

3 you .

4 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you.

5 Rep. Santarsiero.

6 REP. SANTARSIERO: Thank you,

7 Mr . Chairman.

8 And thank you for joining us this

9 afternoon.

10 You know, I think we all favor openness

11 and transparency in government, but there's no

12 question that there are some serial requesters out

13 there.

14 MS. MUTCHLER: That's true.

15 REP. SANTARSIERO: People who regularly

16 send out the numerous requests, very often asking

17 for information they already have, frankly, or can

18 easily get from another source, merely to make the

19 point that they're entitled to get it under the

20 Right-to-Know Law.

21 Do we, in any way -- or is there any

22 way to track the costs, statewide, for those types

23 of requests made by those types of individuals?

24 MS. MUTCHLER: There's nothing in place

25 that requires the cost tracking, if you will. What 1 we have done is we encourage local agencies -- our

2 deputy director, Nathan Byerly, is very good at

3 this. When he goes out, he tells these agencies,

4 "Keep track of what you're spending, keep track of

5 the hours, provide that to us," so that we can, you

6 know, come to you and say, Here's what it is.

7 I do know that there's a resolution,

8 it's House Resolution 100, that would require a

9 study of the Right-to-Know Law to address these

10 very things.

11 One year after enactment of that

12 resolution, the resolution suggests that you would

13 track, you know, how much — how many hours, what

14 it costs the local agencies, state agencies. But

15 there's nothing right now, other than we encourage

16 agencies to do it and keep track of those things,

17 but there's no mechanism that they're required to

18 do it. So right now, in that regard, it's only

19 anecdotal.

20 REP. SANTARSIERO: Okay. Because I -­

21 you know, I can envision a number of different

22 levels of cost involved, and one is just pretty

23 basic, when a request comes in, it's

24 straightforward and there's no question that it

25 complies and is -- should be responded to under the 1 law. That's just fairly simple, but there's cost

2 associated with that.

3 Then, the next level of the situation,

4 I guess, would be one where there's some question

5 and there needs to be some research to determine

6 whether or not the request is something that the

7 requester is entitled to under the law.

8 And then the third case, where I would

9 imagine it becomes the most costly, is when the

10 request is denied and the requester decides to

11 initiate litigation and then the cost of that

12 litigation and then that can, obviously, you know,

13 go on for some time at significant cost to the

14 publi c.

15 MS. MUTCHLER: Well, there is a couple

16 of costs, I think. And you rightly identify them.

17 Right now, a lot of times people think

18 that, oh, it's free to file a Right-to-Know

19 request. Well, it is, on one hand, but when you

20 even file appeal, you have the cost of our office

21 related to this. So that's initially.

22 When an agency denies a request and the

23 requester appeals to us, there's a lot of, even at

24 that juncture, response that's involved by the

25 agency, because now they have to kick in their 1 lawyers to handle their appeal with us, in most

2 instances. And yes, you do get into — actually,

3 one of things that the Right-to-Know Law has

4 revealed is the amount of money in legal invoices

5 that are being spent on things like Right-to-Know

6 and other areas.

7 And so there is a — it’s — my belief

8 is it was never designed to become litigation. It

9 was designed for a quick and speedy way for

10 citizens to access the records that they own. But,

11 of course, it’s never that simple, and so you

12 have — I ’m just looking at last year’s, what’s

13 going to be coming out this year, the five top

14 requesters to the Office of Open Records, you know,

15 a fellow named Sean Donahue, at seventy-seven, who

16 was just recently jailed for threatening public

17 officials, our office included; a fellow name Shawn

18 Makanvand, who I don’t know who — I can’t remember

19 what — if he’s a regular citizens or what the

20 story is; and Mr. Hoyer, who’s an inmate in the

21 Lebanon area; and then a city councilman. And so,

22 you know, for people in these districts

23 particularly, there’s a lot of additional costs

24 that were never intended to associate with it.

25 One way that we try to help agencies 1 is -- to reduce those costs, is to tell them

2 up front that the key to running a smooth shop and

3 reducing your costs is to manage your records; stay

4 in tune with how long you’re required to retain a

5 record, because if you have records that are twenty

6 years old, you’re on the hook for them. And so we

7 try to get them into the management style of

8 managing the records.

9 Also, if someone files a Right-to-Know

10 request, don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and

11 say, What is it that you’re really looking for.

12 Can we do this outside of a Right-to-Know context?

13 And that happens a lot.

14 So you properly identify that there’s a

15 lot of costs. I think that townships bear an

16 inordinate amount of stress related to this, not

17 that it’s not still a good law, but I do think that

18 that’s something that has to be looked at, and we

19 try to help agencies by giving them tips on how we,

20 at least, think that they can reduce the costs

21 associated with this.

22 REP. SANTARSIERO: Thanks.

23 And if I may, Mr. Chairman, that list,

24 you do have a list of the people who filed the most

25 requests? 1 MS. MUTCHLER: Yes.

2 REP. SANTARSIERO: And is that

3 statewide?

4 MS. MUTCHLER: It's statewide. What we

5 have is, you guys -- you, the legislature requires

6 us to put out an annual report. We do it every

7 year, usually during Sunshine Week, so it will come

8 out in March. And what we do is give you an

9 overview of everything that's happened, the number

10 of appeals, the breakdown of which agencies, you

11 know, sort of the ones that have the highest

12 volume, the ones that come to us the most, which,

13 by the way, is corrections. And God bless those

14 guys, because they provide records that -- I' m

15 about as pro open government as you're going to

16 get, and I -- and they go to an extreme even that

17 I'm not even sure I would go to. But they have the

18 highest number of, probably, requests and appeals.

19 And this breakdown is available, and

20 what we do is, we transmit it to the clerks of each

21 chamber, and then we understand it's disseminated

22 to all of you, and you should be getting that

23 within the month.

24 REP. SANTARSIERO: So does the

25 breakdown include the individual names? 1 MS. MUTCHLER: Yes.

2 REP. SANTARSIERO: And do you do this

3 for every year?

4 MS. MUTCHLER: Yes.

5 REP. SANTARSIERO: So you have this

6 going back to when the Right-to-Know Act was

7 passed.

8 MS. MUTCHLER: We do.

9 REP. SANTARSIERO: Okay. I would

10 like -­

11 MS. MUTCHLER: It's all on our website,

12 too.

13 REP. SANTARSIERO: Okay. Great.

14 Because I' m not going to ask you -- I' m not going

15 to make a Right-to-Know request. But I would like

16 that get that information. That would be helpful.

17 MS. MUTCHLER: You're one we would

18 respond to.

19 REP. SANTARSIERO: Thank you.

20 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you.

21 Rep. Mahoney.

22 REP. MAHONEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

23 I'll make this short and sweet. I got

24 hunger pangs over here and the Peppermint Patties

25 aren't getting it. 1 Terry, I want to thank you personally

2 for coming out in my area every year and doing the

3 classes, because it grows every year. And the

4 local municipalities and school boards, they're

5 understanding this law a little bit more, and

6 it's — I mean, it's very, very important for the

7 locals to understand what's open and what's not.

8 And the only question I have, and I

9 think it's the most important question that anyone

10 can ask from this agency, when we created this

11 Office of Open Records, what was the ranking of the

12 state of PA at that time?

13 MS. MUTCHLER: As I understand it from

14 the federal Freedom of Information Coalition, which

15 is out of the University of Missouri, PA was ranked

16 forty-ninth, and Illinois, where I came from, was

17 ranked fiftieth, so I' m slowly moving up the chain

18 here. But forty-ninth.

19 REP. MAHONEY: And what are we ranked

20 now?

21 MS. MUTCHLER: By them, you -- PA has

22 recently been re-ranked at -- at least this is what

23 the chairman or the executive director of that

24 group told me, at twenty-five, and the feeling was

25 that we were going to move up into the fourteens. 1 However, another agency — it's called

2 the Sunshine Review -- j ust ranked PA as the fifth

3 most transparent state. And so, you know, it

4 depends on whose ranking that you follow there, but

5 that is directly correlated to the strength of the

6 law that the legislature created.

7 REP. MAHONEY: I'd say either one of

8 those rankings are a lot better than where we were

9 five years ago.

10 MS. MUTCHLER: Sure. Absolutely.

11 REP. MAHONEY: And my closing comment,

12 I agree with Chairman Adolph. We do need to change

13 this law as a common sense, to help your agency,

14 you know, perform in a better and more productive

15 way.

16 And that's all I have to say, Terry,

17 and just —

18 MS. MUTCHLER: Thank you.

19 Rep. MAHONEY: — you do great job and

20 appreciate everything you do.

21 MS. MUTCHLER: Well, thank you. It's

22 actually, really, my staff. I get the fun part,

23 but those are the guys that, you know, handle the

24 division of twenty-three hundred by six so -­

25 REP. MAHONEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 1 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you,

2 Representative.

3 And thanks for your work over the years

4 on this law.

5 Terry, I want to thank you for

6 testifying before us. Like all the folks that come

7 before us, we'll certainly consider your budget

8 request and do the best that we can.

9 MS. MUTCHLER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman

10 and all the members. Thank you very much.

11 CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you.

12 For the member's information, this

13 committee will reconvene tomorrow morning,

14 Thursday, February 28th, at 9: 30 a. m. , with the

15 Department of State.

16 Thank you.

17 (Whereupon, the hearing concluded at

18 4: 5 5 p. m. )

19

20

21

22

23

24

25 1 REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE

2 I HEREBY CERTIFY that I was present

3 upon the hearing of the above-entitled matter and

4 there reported stenographically the proceedings had

5 and the testimony produced; and I further certify

6 that the foregoing is a true and correct transcript

7 of my said stenographic notes.

8

9 BRENDA J. PARDUN, RPR 10 Court Reporter Notary Public 11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25