The last time a Pennsylvania governor vetoed a bill passed unanimously by the General Assembly was in 1978, when Milton Shapp was the state’s chief executive, but it’s likely to happen again this week, according to information provided Monday by state Rep. Seth Grove, R-York, and the office of Gov. Tom Wolf.

The 1978 bill was a code revision to provide psychological services to non-public schools, while the current bill that’s on Wolf’s desk calls for state government to maintain its Right-to-Know responsibilities during a declaration of emergency — prohibiting the kind of suspension of the RTK law made by Wolf early in the coronavirus pandemic.

Grove sponsored House Bill 2463 largely due to lawmakers’ inability to learn the administration’s ground rules for granting waivers after Wolf’s shutdown of non-essential businesses in mid-March, but also in response to other alleged issues, including those encountered by reporters seeking information on the pandemic, according to state Sen. Judy Ward, R-Blair, Grove and Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania Newsmedia Association, who spoke with Grove during a virtual news conference Monday.

“The governor plans to veto the bill later this week,” stated an email from Lyndsay Kensinger, a spokeswoman for Wolf’s office.

Among the bill’s deficiencies are a failure to make “allowances for the health or safety of commonwealth employees who may need to access physical offices to process” RTK requests, along with a provision that would authomatically “‘deem’ requests to be denied while agencies might be working feverishly to provide a timely response,” plus provisions that could force “problematic and risky disclosure of information related to critical infrastructure and various other public safety sectors,” Kensinger wrote.

That information could be used by terrorists or could be used to the detriment of school safety — and it could include confidential health data or proprietary business knowledge, she wrote.

The basis in the emergency declaration law for Wolf’s suspension of normal RTK procedures was the occasional inaccessibility of buildings during floods and and other disasters, according to Grove.

And while state government buildings may have been closed for the pandemic, they were hardly inaccessible to employees who could have gone in safely to retrieve necessary documents, he said.

Moreover, many such documents could have been retrieved electronically by state employees working from home, he said.

“While transparency between government and people is critical during normal times, it is even more important during times of emergency,” Grove stated in his memo for the bill’s introduction.

But now, RTK requests are being processed by state agencies in normal fashion, according to Erik Arneson, executive director of the state’s Office of Open Records, which is an independent, quasi-judicial office that decides appeals under the RTK law and which has been open and fully functioning throughout the pandemic.

Moreover, many agencies that weren’t processing information requests under the RTK law were responding to such requests informally from the beginning, Melewsky stated in an email.

But that is not sufficient, according to Melewsky.

“The administration’s press office and the various press officers of state agencies made good faith efforts to provide information,” she wrote. “But that informal process is just that: informal, with no legal rights attached.”

Many journalists complained to her they got no response or they got answers that didn’t relate to the questions they asked, according to Melewsky.

And when that happened, there was “no right to appeal to a neutral third party like the (Office of Open Records) or a court,” she wrote. There were also no time limits imposed for answers, no real duty to respond, according to Melewsky.

Thus there was no accountability, she wrote.

The administration’s arguments that the proposed new law would create a variety of risks is invalid, because the 30 exemptions in the RTK law would still apply, according to Melewsky.

“There are exemptions for trade secrets, confidential and proprietary information, individuals’ medical information, investigation exemptions, and several related to safety and security risks to individuals, buildings and critical infrastructure,” she wrote.

Despite unanimous support for the bill, Grove declined to say whether he expected an override of the veto by two-thirds of each chamber.

“It’s not officially vetoed yet,” he stated.

The three local lawmakers are wholly behind Grove’s effort.

Wolf’s suspension of the RTK law was “not good government practice,” said state Rep. Jim Gregory, R-Hollidaysburg. “(He) continued to keep Pennsylvanians in the dark.”

“The governor hid behind the emergency declaration,” Sen. Ward said, recalling calls from many constituents upset about the waivers.

“Cockroaches and governors with something to hide hate the light,” said state Rep. Lou Schmitt, R-Altoona. “The governor ran for office as Mr. Transparency,” he said. “Now he seeks to resist the unanimous vote of the General Assembly that reflects the overwhelming will of the people.”

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.