Why public access matters

Mike Joseph's powerful story today on the state of Centre County bridges is eye-opening, you'll find.

It also is a story that couldn't have been told in full until now.

Why so? It's based on data disclosed just last week by PennDOT, in the aftermath of the Minneapolis bridge collapse.

PennDOT didn't get the idea on its own to share bridge inspection data with Pennsylvanians. It was pushed to disclose records by the public, the media, and legislators, and its decision was revealed at the House State Government committee meeting featured a short time ago in the paper and in this blog.

I think you'll find that we're all better off in finding out information like this. Certainly, it shouldn't be kept from the public.

Our hope is that the legislature and Gov. Ed Rendell revise the state's poor open records law to make it routine that data like this is released by government agencies, PennDOT among them.