Buehl v. Office of Open Records
Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania
No. 317, C.D. 2010
October 14, 2010
The Commonwealth Court determined that the price a third-party contractor paid for items it resold to inmates in prison commissaries under a contract with the Department of Corrections was outside the scope of its contracted work and thus was not subject to disclosure under the Right to Know Law.
Background
Roger Buehl, a state prison inmate, submitted a Right to Know Law request to the Department of Corrections seeking records of Keefe Company, a third-party contracted to perform prison commissary services.
Specifically, Buehl sought records showing the prices of the goods Keefe bought to resell to the inmates.
The department denied the request, stating that the requested records did not exist in its files.
Buehl appealed to the Office of Open Records, which ruled that Keefe was a government contractor, but that its purchase records were not directly related to the government function it performed.
Buehl appealed that decision to the Commonwealth Court.
Commonwealth Court Decision
The Commonwealth Court explained that in order for the records of a government contractor to be subject to disclosure under the RTKL, those records must be in the contractor’s possession and must directly relate to the government function the contractor performs.
The cCourt determined that “Keefe’s only contractual obligations to the department pertain to providing commissary services and reselling items to inmates at agreed-upon prices.”
According to the court, the prices Keefe paid for the items it later resold did not directly relate to providing the commissary services and thus did not directly relate to the government function it carried out.