Court Opinion

ID: 9701578
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:25:37.745168+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:25.427376
License: Public Domain

Concurring and Dissenting Opinion by
Judge MacPhail:
I concur with the majority’s disposition of the preliminary objections to Count One of the Petition for Review. I respectfully dissent to the majority’s disposition of the preliminary objections to Count Two because I am of the firm opinon that Count Two presents to this Court a non-justiciable issue. I do not believe this Court should intervene in what appears to me to be essentially a political dispute between the Minority Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Governor over information that may or may not be “budgetary data” under Section 620 of the Administrative Code and may or may not be “reasonable detail” information under Article VIII, Section 12 of the Constitution of Pennsylvania. The Petitioner *166would not be prejudiced by our failure to intervene here because we have indicated that he can obtain the information he seeks under the “right-to-know-law” if he sends someone to obtain it.
If I could be certain that the majority’s decision in this case would be limited to the facts of this case, I might not be so concerned. What alarms me is that our decision in this case opens up a whole new area of law where this Court may be called upon in the future to determine what is or is not “budgetary data” and whether or not the Governor has fulfilled his constitutional obligation to submit budget information in “reasonable detail.” To me, these are areas where the courts should hesitate to adjudicate unless there is no other way to resolve the dispute. Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962). As I have indicated, this is not the situation in the case which is not before us.