By The River

With former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge being talked about as a possible running mate for John McCain this fall, the hundreds of thousands of pages of documents he generated as governor from 1995-2001 need to be opened to public scrutiny.

As I noted last week, Ridge's papers are stored at public expense in the State Archives in Harrisburg, but are closed to public access for around 25 years. In theory, a journalist can ask for access, but in reality you won't get in. I was told by Ridge's archivist, Nicolette Parisi, that Glen Thomas, the former Ridge aide and Public Utility Commission chairman, was the person to see about access to these documents, but he denies that. Regardless, they remain locked up.

Those might have been interesting, given the close involvement of the corrupt Texas corporation Enron in the Pennsylvania electric competition debate back then, the personal visit Enron chairman Ken Lay made to Ridge in Harrisburg, and the call then-Gov. George W. Bush of Texas made to Ridge on Lay's behalf. No wonder Ridge locked them away.

No matter what the technical legal status of Ridge's papers may beunder state law, the public has moral rights to them. We paid the taxes that Ridge used to govern the state. It is only right that we be able to see what went on in our name during his administration. These are not personal notes from Ridge to his wife we're talking about. They are the documents generated by Ridge and his direct staff carrying out their official duties. Gov. Robert Casey's papers were opened not very long after he left office.

In many other states--Texas, ironically, being one of them--a governor's papers are considered public property and are open almost from the day they arrive in the state archives at the end of his or her administration. But not here. Even the new Open Records Act exempts documents in the State Archives from mandatory public access. Pennsylvania had one of the worst freedom of information statutes before that law was passed, and still does.

Will Ridge be the nominee? Probably not. As much as McCain and Ridge apparently like each other, McCain will almost be forced to pick a hard right anti-abortion conservative as his running mate. Ridge is at least nominally pro-choice, which will likely doom his chances.

The only chance Ridge really has is if McCain decides the possibility of winning Pennsylvania with Ridge on the ticket outweigh the losses of votes from the religious right. Interestingly, when Ridge was considered for vice president by Bush in 2000 and then for Secretary of Defense in 2001, the main thing used against him by the right, in addition to his pro-choice positions, was that he had no defense experience beyond his Army service in Vietnam. Gary Bauer called him a "peacenik" and Robert Novak attacked him for not supporting President Reagan's Star Wars initiative.

I personally don't think Ridge being on the ticket will matter much to McCain in whether he wins the state. Ridge has been out of office and away from the state for years. The fact that Camp Hill Republicans think Ridge means victory doesn't really mean much in the end. Whether Gov. Rendell's people are finally talking to Barack Obama's people will have far more impact.

And McCain isn't running for President of Pennsylvania. The only thing people nationally know about Ridge is that he was the first Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. In the minds of many voters, that equates to long lines at airports, color-code security alerts, and the disaster in New Orleans, even though that happened 10 months after Ridge stepped down as DHS secretary.

Ridge did some good things as governor, but electric competition has not turned out to be one of them. In the name of understanding how we got into this mess, and so the public at large can better understand what type of a vice president he might be, it is time to open the Ridge Papers to full public scrutiny.