HARRISBURG - The Pennsylvania Newspaper Association has sharply criticized the state Open Records Office for a ruling that the group says would allow school boards and other agencies to conduct more public business behind closed doors.

"These are public access laws and if they're going to be interpreted, I think they should be interpreted on the side of public access," Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the association, said Friday.

At issue is a draft budget that the Northampton School Board discussed at a special meeting in February.

The board provided a copy of the proposal to a reporter for The Morning Call in Allentown the day after the meeting but redacted the dollar figures. The reporter appealed, and the Open Records Office upheld the school board's decision to withhold the numbers.

In her ruling, appeals officer Lucinda Glinn reasoned the board didn't reach a decision at the meeting and could withhold the information under a provision in the state's Right-to-Know public records law that exempts documents used in "predecisional deliberations."

Emily Leader, an attorney for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, said the case is a textbook example of the kind of situations lawmakers intended the "predecisional" exemption to cover.

Melewsky said the budget figures should have been made public because the "predecisional" exception does not apply to a proposal once it is presented to a quorum of board members for deliberation at a public meeting.

Pennsylvania's open-meetings law also called the Sunshine Act defines "deliberation" as "the discussion of agency business held for the purpose of making a decision."