Background
In February 2024, Susan Noto — acting on behalf of Zillow, Inc. — submitted a request under Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law (RTKL) to Luzerne County seeking an electronic copy of the county’s 2023 CAMA (Computer-Assisted Mass Appraisal) Data: comprehensive property assessment files covering every parcel in the county, in Excel, text, or CSV format. CAMA Data is the foundational database for real property valuation — the same information that platforms like Zillow use to generate automated property estimates.
Luzerne County did not deny the request outright. Instead, it quoted a fee of $10,100 — calculated at $0.06 per parcel — citing Section 1307(b)(4) of the RTKL, which permits fees for “complex and extensive data sets, including geographic information systems or integrated property assessment lists” to be “based on the reasonable market value of the same or closely related data sets.” County emails produced during the proceeding showed officials from multiple counties comparing and coordinating their per-parcel rates for similar CAMA Data requests.
Noto appealed the fee to the Office of Open Records (OOR), which upheld the county’s fee in May 2024. She then appealed to the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas, which affirmed in January 2025. Appellants argued throughout that the RTKL’s fee provision should be read to limit charges to the market value of duplication services — the cost of making a copy — not the market value of the underlying data. They also contended the county acted in bad faith by coordinating pricing with neighboring counties to drive up fees and recoup data-maintenance costs.
The Court’s Holding
The Commonwealth Court, sitting en banc in a seven-judge panel, affirmed. Judge Covey wrote the opinion joined by President Judge Cohn Jubelirer and Judges Wojcik, Dumas, Wallace, Wolf, and Tsai.
On the fee question, the court held that Section 1307(b)(4) of the RTKL unambiguously creates a separate pricing regime for complex data sets. CAMA Data — a comprehensive, formatted, parcel-level database — is precisely the kind of “integrated property assessment list” that the subsection contemplates. For such records, the statute expressly permits fees based on the “reasonable market value of the same or closely related data sets,” a standard distinct from the general duplication-fee provision in Section 1307(b)(1)–(2) that caps charges at the cost of photocopying or comparable services. Relying on Weiss v. Williamsport Area School District, 872 A.2d 269 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2005), the court held that comparing prices charged by other Pennsylvania counties for the same dataset is a valid method of establishing reasonable market value. The county’s $0.06-per-parcel rate sat at the median and below the mean of the fifteen comparable counties in evidence. The court found no error in the OOR’s or trial court’s reasoning.
On the bad-faith claim, the court dispatched the issue quickly. Section 1304(a) of the RTKL authorizes fee-shifting and cost awards only when a court reverses an agency’s final determination or grants access over the agency’s objection. Because the court affirmed the county’s determination in full, the predicate for a bad-faith award was never triggered — regardless of how the inter-county emails might otherwise be characterized.
Key Takeaways
- Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law, 65 P.S. § 67.1307(b)(4), creates a separate fee standard for “complex and extensive data sets” such as CAMA Data and GIS files: agencies may charge based on the reasonable market value of the data, not merely the cost of duplication. Requesters seeking bulk digital databases are not protected by the lower photocopying-rate ceiling.
- Comparing prices charged by other Pennsylvania counties for the same data set is a legally sufficient method of establishing “reasonable market value” under Section 1307(b)(4). Coordinating fee information across counties — without more — does not constitute bad faith under the RTKL.
- A bad-faith award under Section 1304(a) requires a threshold finding that the court reversed the agency or granted access. Appellants who lose on the merits cannot invoke Section 1304(a)’s fee-shifting mechanism, even if the agency’s conduct was aggressive.
- Sitting en banc, the Commonwealth Court’s decision carries maximum precedential weight within that court. Commercial data aggregators seeking bulk property assessment data from Pennsylvania counties should budget for market-value-based fees, which may far exceed per-page duplication rates.
Why It Matters
Noto v. Luzerne County lands at the intersection of open-records law and the commercial data economy. Zillow and similar platforms depend on bulk property assessment data to power automated valuation models, and right-to-know requests are a primary channel for acquiring that data from county-level systems across the state. The Commonwealth Court’s decision confirms that Pennsylvania counties can charge market rates — not just photocopying rates — for high-value structured databases, a distinction that can mean the difference between a negligible fee and a five- or six-figure invoice.
The opinion also forecloses a pricing-collusion theory that Appellants hoped would expose the county’s fee as bad faith. Under the court’s reading, counties pooling information about comparable rates is consistent with the RTKL’s “reasonable market value” standard rather than a subversion of it. Practitioners advising government data requesters, commercial data companies, or county open-records officers should note that the en banc posture of the decision gives it the broadest possible precedential footing within the Commonwealth Court, making future panels unlikely to depart absent Pennsylvania Supreme Court review.