First the good news: Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know law (RTK) is proving itself to be more effective than any time in the past decade, according to a statewide survey coordinated by The Associated Press.

But “better than it used to be” still isn’t good enough. There’s still plenty of issues to deal with when it comes to getting public information out of government agencies. We see several overarching problems:

- Commercial requests. Most people think of RTK as an interaction between government and citizens, or government and the news media. But the truth is that for-profit organizations seeking to use public information to enhance their own prospects are an incredible burden on the Right-to-Know system.

Businesses request everything from development plans and building permits to information on students — and they’re entitled to do so. But not on taxpayers’ dime.

Many of these requests are sprawling and time-consuming to fulfill. Public agencies, which currently can only charge for copying costs, should be allowed to reasonably bill companies for the work they put into responding to commercial requests for information.

- The criminal investigative exception. This is one of the most problematic aspects of Pennsylvania’s current RTK statute, and state laws give police agencies wide latitude to apply it and keep anything deemed “investigative material” out of public view — which is exactly what they do.

As part of the AP’s survey, 25 requests were filed with police agencies across the state; only five departments released any information at all. Most of those which denied access cited the exception, but the uneven nature of what was and was not disclosed exposes the fundamental flaws of allowing agencies with a vested interest in the outcome to have the last word on what is and isn’t released.

For example, police in Springdale Township, Allegheny County, saw fit to release video of a police pursuit that ended with three people being hauled away in handcuffs. While in Greenburg, Pa., a police chief used the exception to deny a request for dash-cam video used to charge an officer with falsifying inspection reports.

What is the substantive difference between those two pieces of footage, other than the fact that one involves a police officer accused of wrongdoing?

A better course forward would jettison the current, department-led review process for a system that is more even-handed and unbiased. There needs to be a truly impartial organization making final determinations about what is and isn’t a public record.

- Uneven compliance. It’s true that government agencies have made significant strides since 2008 when it comes to complying with the requirements of RTK law. But that only makes the instances of failure stand out more starkly.

By-and-large it seems, these failings occur at the level of local government — from municipalities who wrongly refuse to provide people with copies of the informational packets used at government meetings, to those who improperly announce and use executive sessions.

Just as troubling is the trend among some municipalities and schools of heavily redacting records that show how much the organizations spent fighting access to government records — or even what was in dispute in the first place.

Whether it’s actually gamesmanship or a well-intentioned misinterpretation of RTK law, these failures send the message that government at all levels is playing games with the public’s right to information.

Until the law becomes more effective at producing consistent compliance and functional knowledge among government officials at all levels, Pennsylvania will have a transparency problem.