Hold the phone!
The Associated Press reports that a taxpayer-funded $35,000-plus consultant’s report on security failings that facilitated the April 13 firebombing of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s official residence will not be made public.
Say what?
Per the AP, “Retired state police Col. Jeffrey Miller said in a statement that the ‘sensitive nature’ of the findings he has given to Shapiro and state police ‘precludes their release to the public for obvious reasons.’”
No, it doesn’t.
A major security failure – colossal, whopping, gigantic, mammoth – came quite close to costing the governor and his family their lives.
Or perhaps it wasn’t “major.” Perhaps it was an embarrassing security lapse born of complacency.
But no matter how big, or small, the security failure was, the public has every right to know what it was. And it also has a right to know if anyone was disciplined – written up, demoted, fired – for the lapse(s).
After all, as it once was written, “One person’s embarrassment is another person’s accountability.”
Indeed, we concede that whatever security upgrades have or will be made in the aftermath of this attack should remain confidential. There’s no reason to give a future, would-be attacker a blueprint for a follow-up dastardly deed. But detailing what security measures were not in place, or failed, can and should be made public.
After all, they’ve been corrected, right?
Heck, there’s even a question as to whether state legislators, who, as one state representative notes, very well could be called upon to appropriate more public money to correct the problems, will be allowed to see the Miller report.
That’s just as outrageously unacceptable.
It also has been written that “accountability breeds response-ability” and that “transparency increases credibility and accountability.”
Keeping this report under wraps disserves “response-ability,” transparency and accountability.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
