Centre County officials think Huntingdon County Judge Stewart Kurtz was wrong to rule against them in the lawsuit filed by district attorney Stacy Parks Miller — and on a number of points too.
On Thursday, the county’s attorney, Mary Lou Maierhofer, filed a ten-point “statement of errors” that lay out exactly where she thinks Kurtz went wrong. These alleged errors will form the basis of the county’s pending appeal of Kurtz’s decisions to the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court.
Parks Miller is suing the county for releasing some of her cell phone records to defense attorneys who filed Right to Know requests with the county. Centre County judges Jonathan Grine and Kelley Gillette-Walker are also suing the county for similar reasons, and all three say the county broke state law and county policy by filling the requests.
When the three judicial officers brought their lawsuits, they were able to convice Judge Kurtz to issue an order preventing the county from filling any similar requests. That’s the first place the court made a mistake, Maierhofer writes in her statement of errors.
She argues that the three plaintiffs were not able to show “manifest wrong” suggesting that the release of the records had to be stopped immediately.
By contrast, the judges and DA originally argued for an injunction because the records were being used by defense attorneys to allege the appearance of bias in the courtroom, which the plaintiffs successfully argued was causing undue harm.
Maierhofer also thinks Judge Kurtz focused on the wrong issues in the lawsuits when they made their way into the courtroom for a hearing.
Kurtz ruled that the DA and the judges are judicial officers, which means their phone records are actually judicial records that the county had no authority to release. Attorneys for the judges and DA argued — and Kurtz agreed — that county violated the separation of powers between the executive and judicial branches of government by releasing the records.
Maierhofer believes that this decision was wrong for several interlocking reasons.
In her statement of errors, she says Kurtz should have focused on the county’s claim that the records are actually public financial records. Maierhofer argues the cell phones “were contracted for and maintained by the County and paid for with County taxpayer funds,” which she claims makes the records county financial documents instead of judicial records.
She goes on to argue that the records only showed the dates and times that phone calls and texts were sent and received. Maierhofer says Kurtz gave this point short shrift, and that such limited information shouldn’t be considered a privacy violation for public judicial officials.
Grine, Gillette-Walker and Parks Miller have disputed those points. On multiple occasions, they have argued that the records are completely outside the scope of the county’s authority to disclose. Parks Miller has also said that her county phone was paid for with drug forfeiture funds, giving the county even less of a hand in her records.
Maierhofer’s last point focuses on other kinds of records that Judge Kurtz ruled the county does not have the authority to access, including “emails, letters or similar electronic data.” She thinks this ruling was overly broad and simplistic.
Maierhofer argues that the individual nature and content of every document should be considered when the county decides whether it has the authority to view or release information in response to a Right to Know request. Parks Miller and her attorney successfully argued that granting the county access to these documents would violate the Criminal History Information Records Act and jeopardize sensitive information about ongoing investigations.
Judge Kurtz is expected to issue an opinion responding to these concerns.
