Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency v. Ali
Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania
No. 845 C.D. 2011
March 7, 2012
The Commonwealth Court held that a request seeking “all correspondence … concerning” a mortgage restructuring and workout project “and, or distributed to the Board” was insufficiently specific, finding that the Office of Open Records (“OOR”) lacks statutory authority to narrow the scope of the request so that it becomes sufficiently specific.
Background
Requester Jihad Ali submitted a Right to Know Law request to the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Authority (“PHFA”) for copies of all correspondence, including proposals and sales agreements, for two items found on the PHFA February 10, 2011, agenda — Restructuring of a Mortgage Loan for Tasker Village and a Project Workout for Chestnut/56th Street Apartments and/or distributed to the Board.
The PHFA denied the request, stating it was insufficiently specific and that the requested records are exempted under the internal predecisional deliberations exception.
Ali appealed to the Office of Open Records, who ordered the disclosure of the records. The OOR stated that Ali’s request specified that he wanted only certain correspondence that was distributed to the Board for its agenda, and was therefore sufficiently specific for PHFA to respond. The OOR also stated that the PHFA failed to prove that the records reflected internal pre-decisional deliberations. The PHFA appealed to the Commonwealth Court.
Commonwealth Court decision
The court reversed in part the OOR’s final determination. Ali’s request specifically stated “all correspondence…concerning” the two properties “and, or distributed to the Board.” The Court ruled that the OOR erred in interpreting this to mean only those documents actually “distributed to the Board for the agenda.” The Court said that this “qualification is not apparent on the face of the requests.”
The court cited a prior decision that ruled on this same issue and explained the proper process for handling requests and appeals: “The requester tells the agency what records he wants, and the agency responds by either giving the records or denying the request by providing specific reasons why the request has been denied … Nowhere in this process had the General Assembly provided that the OOR can refashion the request.”