Background
Bruce Wishnefsky, an inmate at SCI-Laurel Highlands, asked the Department of Corrections for the portion of its policy describing what staff must do when an inmate cannot produce a urine sample within two hours. The Department supplied some material but withheld Policy 6.3.12, invoking Right-to-Know Law exemptions for records whose disclosure would create a substantial risk of physical harm or undermine public-safety activity.
The Office of Open Records denied Wishnefsky’s appeal based on a Department affidavit describing the policy’s operational sensitivity. Wishnefsky argued that the affidavit was conclusory and that the OOR should have reviewed the policy in camera before accepting the claimed security risks.
The Court’s Holding
The Commonwealth Court affirmed. Judge Stacy Wallace concluded that the Department’s affidavit supplied a logical and sufficiently detailed connection between disclosure and the asserted risk. Knowledge of the precise testing steps, timing, and safeguards could help inmates manipulate collection procedures, defeat drug detection, or conceal contraband activity. Those consequences implicate both individual safety and institutional security.
An agency may meet its RTKL burden through competent affidavit evidence when the affidavit is specific, credible, and unrebutted. The requester offered no evidence of bad faith or a concrete reason to reject the Department official’s description. The court therefore declined to substitute speculation for the factfinder’s supported assessment of the security consequences.
The court also held that in camera review was not mandatory. Such review is a discretionary evidentiary tool, not an automatic step whenever a requester disputes an affidavit. Unlike a precedent in which the reviewing tribunal had already examined the disputed policy and the appellate record required comparable scrutiny, the OOR reasonably found the affidavit sufficient here.
Key Takeaways
- A detailed agency affidavit can establish an RTKL security exemption without public disclosure of the sensitive policy itself.
- The affidavit must explain a reasonable connection between release and a substantial, demonstrable safety or public-security risk.
- In camera review is discretionary when other competent evidence adequately supports the exemption.
- Unrebutted agency evidence receives weight, but a bare or conclusory assertion would not necessarily carry the burden.
Why It Matters
Wishnefsky gives agencies a roadmap for protecting operational security information without describing it so fully that the exemption becomes self-defeating. Affidavits should identify the official’s expertise, the policy’s function, and the mechanism by which disclosure would increase risk.
Requesters, meanwhile, should target weaknesses in that causal explanation and offer counterevidence when possible. Simply demanding in camera inspection does not require the OOR or a court to conduct it where a developed affidavit already permits reasoned review.