With no state guidance on how to handle supplementary materials like audio recordings of public meetings, municipal governments and school boards are left to create their own policies.

The issue of how long governmental bodies should keep recordings of meetings for public use was highlighted July 6 when the Butler Township commissioners voted to dramatically shorten the time audio recordings of meetings are kept.

The township had kept those records for two years. Now they will be kept only until minutes from the meeting are approved.

After that action, the Butler Eagle checked with several other local governments to see how they handle recordings.

Those checks found a wide variety of policies that Erik Arneson, executive director of the state’s Office of Open Records, said isn’t surprising given the lack of state regulations regarding audio tapes.

Arneson said the time is right to consider broader rules governing how such records are handled by municipal governments.

“Over the next couple of years, I think it is an appropriate time for the General Assembly to consider the issue,” Arneson said. “And to the extent that this office could be a resource, we would be happy to” participate.

Arneson’s office has never issued official recommendations on audio recordings, he said, and the recordings aren’t fully regulated by state law.

“There’s nothing in the Right-to-Know law ... that requires a recording of that type to be maintained for any period of time,” Arneson said.

That leaves municipal governments and school boards to create their own rules on the tapes — if they use the tapes at all.

Butler City Council, Cranberry Township and the Butler School District do not tape their meetings. Secretaries take down the minutes during the meeting.

Mindy Gall, Butler city clerk, noted council’s monthly voting meeting is videotaped and televised by Armstrong Cable.

If the recordings are created, Arneson said, it’s important for citizens and government officials to understand they’re public records while they are maintained.

“When the stop button is pressed, that recording becomes a public record,” Arneson said.

But that’s not always clear to local government officials, some of whom view the recordings as outside the public scope.

The Seneca Valley and Mars school districts both record their board meetings, but the recordings are viewed as internal and not public, secretaries at the districts said. The audio files are used to help transcribe official, written meeting minutes, which are approved by board members at the following month’s meeting.

It’s much the same in Harmony, where secretary Amy Brown uses audio recordings of council meetings as “kind of a backup” in addition to attending and transcribing meetings in real time.

Brown said the Harmony tapes are erased after written minutes are transcribed.

Melissa Melewsky, a lawyer for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, said there’s nothing wrong with those practices.

“There’s no state law ... that governs how long they must be kept,” Melewsky said. “But, if they make a recording of Tuesday’s meeting, it is a public record Wednesday morning if you file a formal (Right-to-Know Law) request.”

Other municipalities retain the audio records for varying lengths of time.

Slippery Rock administrator Lucina Lipko retains audio tapes of borough council meetings for about one month, she said, unless a Right-to-Know request is received.

Evans City secretary Nadine Grabe says she’s yet to destroy a single audio file in seven years.

Grabe, who uses the tapes to transcribe written meeting minutes, says the municipality has never instituted a policy on the tapes so they remain on-file with her office.

“I keep asking them for a policy,” she said, “but we haven’t gotten there yet.”