MIDDLESEX TWP — Though a few procedural questions remain, the changes coming Jan. 1 to the state's open records law do not intimidate municipal leaders.

About a dozen township, borough and school officials gathered Thursday in the township for an open records law presentation during a county Council of Governments meeting.

Act 3 of 2008, the state's updated right-to-know law, goes into effect Jan. 1.

"I think it's going to go smoothly," said Roy Huffman, a Jackson Township supervisor.

The township receives few public record requests, and Huffman expects most future requests to be incident related.

"We have done an excellent job with record management in the past; this is just another avenue," he said of the revised state law.

Jerry Andree, Cranberry Township manager, said the township rarely denies a request out of the hundreds made each year.

"I don't feel it's a problem now," he said. "Most of this is just common sense."

The most significant change in the law is the burden of proof, said Barry Fox, deputy director of the state Office of Open Records.

Now all records are considered closed and the burden of proof is on the requester to show why it should be open. The new law considers all records open, placing the burden on the agency to prove why records should not be made public, he said.

Fox admitted there is not always a clear answer to every question.

"With a law not enacted yet, there is broad language that can be argued by both sides," he said.

Each municipality is required to appoint a right-to-know officer, more than 30 of whom attended a workshop Thursday in Middlesex, Fox said.

Those officers are responsible for handling the requests and becoming familiar with the law, like the 30 open record exceptions, including predecisional labor relations records, ongoing criminal investigations, 911 records and real estate transactions, he said.

Other significant changes to the law include who can make a request and how it is processed.

The new law allows any U.S. citizen to make a request. Now only a state resident can do so, Fox said.

Over time the new law will become routine, Fox said.

"For the most part people are trying to provide the information. This is just changing the parameters," he said.

Municipalities most frequently question the fee structure of providing public records, he said.

The new law permits an agency to charge up to 25 cents for a paper photocopy and $1 per certification of a record, he said.

However, municipalities cannot charge for the time it takes to research, locate or retrieve the record or to redact private information, he said.

Nor can an agency employee ask the person why the information is being requested, he added.

Government offices have five business days to comply with a records request. Another 30 days is available if the office can show the complexity of the request requires more time to produce the records.

Redaction of social security numbers or other private data also is one of the biggest concerns, Fox said.

"It's a new law so it's a borough or township secretary saying, 'What am I supposed to do,'" he said.

The biggest concern among officials on Thursday was e-mail records of public officials and how public they should be considered.

E-mails that set policy or become a receipt of a transaction must be saved, Fox said. E-mails containing public information sent to or from a private computer address do not become private, he said.

"I have friends (for whom) delete is their first choice of action" Huffman said about getting e-mail messages.

But governments are required to make a "good faith effort" to retrieve information, Fox said.

"If you deleted it and you make the best technological search you can do, then you've made a good-faith effort," he said. "The right-to-know police are not going to come after you."

Fox advised municipalities to create separate e-mail addresses for public officials to avoid requests for records from private e-mail addresses.

Existing e-mails should be analyzed just like paper records and agencies should practice good record management, he said.

"You can throw things away," he said. "Obviously you can't keep every piece of paper or e-mail that's created in an office."

Beginning Jan. 1 there will be 10 staffers and attorneys at the state Office of Open Records in Harrisburg to handle appeals and questions, Fox said.

"I think it's going to be fine," said Mark Vincent, Middlesex Township supervisors vice chairman, of the new law.

The township handles requests now with no issues, but might have to formalize the process a little more, he said.

In the future all township police record requests will be funneled through the main office so private information is handled consistently, he said.

"This is really an important issue for municipalities to understand," said Jeff Smith, president of the Harmony Borough Council and of the county COG, about how to handle requests for records.

"It's important for the community to be able to get information they need. If a municipality understands the process, it will be easier to satisfy those requests," he said.