KEEPING PENNSYLVANIA CITIZENS INFORMED
Pennsylvania Senate votes, debates, and bills – and much more – can be accessed via the General Assembly’s website. Citizens can learn who represents them, read bills and amendments, review text of floor debates in the official Senate Journals, and see how senators voted on the floor and in committee. The committee meeting schedule is also available, along with co-sponsorship memos, monthly expense reports for each Senator and historical biographies. Senate sessions are livestreamed, and video from previous sessions is available back to January 2025.
The State Treasury maintains OpenBookPA, a vast resource of data and information related to state finances – including the Fiscal Health Scorecard, daily updates for every state fund, and information about Treasury’s consumer programs – along with the Contracts e-Library, which allows people to search all state contracts valued at $5,000 or more.
The PennWATCH website allows citizens to keep tabs on the state budget, spending, revenue, and employees. Pennsylvania also makes it easy for people to review state purchases, lobbyist registrations & reports and campaign finance reports.
How to Search Pennsylvania Statutes
To look up existing statutes, go to the Statutes section of the General Assembly’s website. From there you can choose to review consolidated statutes, unconsolidated statutes, the state constitution, recently enacted laws, rules and regulations (PA Code), the PA Bulletin, and more.
RIGHT-TO-KNOW LAW & SUNSHINE ACT
The Office of Open Records (OOR) maintains information about Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law and Sunshine Act, including information about filing a request for records, a database of Agency Open Records Officers, and a Citizens’ Guide to the RTKL. The OOR also provides information about filing an appeal when a RTK request is denied and provides a variety of training resources including PowerPoint presentations and videos.