HARRISBURG, PA. — The PA GOP will not get all of the Kathleen McGinty emails it requested from the Office of Open Records, but the Governor’s Office will have to release more emails from the former Chief of Staff for Governor Wolf and current Democratic Senate Nominee within 30 days.
Last year, the Pennsylvania GOP filed an open records request to access emails sent by McGinty while she was Chief of Staff for the Governor. The Governor’s Office refused the request, initially saying the GOP’s request was too broad. An amended request, with a list of over 100 keywords was submitted. The Office of Open Records ruled in December the governor’s office was justified in not releasing certain emails, but said others should have been disclosed. This ruling will result in thousands of pages of emails being released.
Some questioned the PA Gop’s motivation for requesting the emails. Pennsylvania GOP Deputy Communications Director Paul Engelkemier said they were “really just hoping to get final determination of what was in Katie McGinty’s emails before the election to know how she performed in her job, as she’s continued to use the government as a revolving door to bounce from government job to private sector.”
The 30 day deadline to comply with the court’s decision would come after the election.
The PA GOP issued the following statement:
“The time has come for Governor Tom Wolf to stop hiding Katie McGinty’s emails from the public,” Sweeney said. “For the past sixteen months, Katie McGinty has been able to hide her email behind a taxpayer-funded group of government lawyers. Every trick in the book has been used by the Wolf Administration to hide Katie McGinty’s emails. The Office of Open Records now the Commonwealth Court agree that it’s time for the Wolf Administration to stop using taxpayer funds to delay the inevitable release of Katie McGinty’s emails.
“It is time for the games to stop. It’s time for the stall tactics to end. It is time for Governor Tom Wolf’s office to immediately release Katie McGinty’s emails.”
On July 7th, 2015, PA GOP Deputy Communications Director Paul Engelkemier requested outgoing Wolf Chief of Staff’s Katie McGinty’s emails from her tenure in the Wolf Administration.
To date, only 71 out of 15,000 pages of emails in this request have been publicly released, 25 pages of which included an ad for cablewire.
FOX43 News also reached out to McGinty for statement.
