Butler County commissioners approved a consent order Wednesday, Oct. 23, to settle Right-to-Know Law appeals by providing national news organizations with redacted copies of 911 calls made during the July 13 attempt to assassinate former President Donald Trump.
NBC News, Scripps News and The Intercept filed petitions in September seeking to overturn denial of requests for the recordings made under the state’s Right-to-Know Law.
The county denied the request in July, saying recordings of 911 calls are generally exempt from disclosure under the Right-to-Know Law, the county has a policy to release 911 recordings under a court order or subpoena only, and the recordings were the subject of law enforcement investigation into the shootings at the rally.
The news organizations appealed that decision to the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records, which denied the appeal in August. The news organizations subsequently sued to have the transcripts released.
The consent order, which was entered Wednesday in the civil division of Butler County Common Pleas Court, comes after Judge Kelley Streib held a status conference on Oct. 15 with county solicitor Julie Graham and the attorney representing all three news organizations.
The order to release 15 recordings of 911 calls recognizes the historical circumstances surrounding the recordings because they are related to the attempted assassination of a former president, and says the court finds that balancing test of the public interest in disclosure versus the public interest in nondisclosure tips in favor of disclosing those records.
At the commissioners’ meeting, Graham said the state Right-to-Know Law assumes all government records are public except for 911 calls, unless the public interest in disclosure outweighs public interest in nondisclosure for releasing those calls.
The county held to its policy of not releasing 911 calls without a court order or subpoena, but the news organizations appealed, Graham said.
Leslie Osche, commissioners chairwoman, said the county’s policy is aimed at avoiding a scenario in which people are afraid to call 911 in an emergency because they don’t want their calls to be released to the media and played publicly.
“We stood our ground,” Osche said.
She said she’s glad the consent order includes redaction of names and phone numbers of the 911 callers and that the order does not set a precedent.
Osche added that the recordings do not contain any “aha” revelations about the assassination attempt.
Commissioner Kim Geyer said the county’s policy was established in 2000.
The commissioners approved an update to the policy Wednesday.
The update requires people to use the state Office of Open Records request form when requesting county records as a means to ensure the request is coming from a person and not generated through the use of artificial intelligence, and that the person is a U.S. resident, said Maria Malloy, the county open records officer.
She said the county spends time trying to determine if requests made through artificial intelligence are legitimate, and the state Open Records office changed the request form in recognition of those issues.
In 2022, the county processed 266 Right-to-Know requests, hired an outside attorney to help process the requests due to a high number that related to COVID-19 and the election, and hired Matthew Vickless as a part-time open records officer. The county paid the outside attorney $85,590 that year, Malloy said.
In 2023, the county processed 199 requests with the assistance of Graham. That assistance reduced the need for the outside attorney, who was paid $4,900.
As of Oct. 18 this year, 301 requests have been processed, and outside counsel has not been used, even though 19 denials have been appealed and the three settled appeals went to Common Pleas Court, Malloy said.
