The state constitution.
   
There’s nothing secret about it.
   
It lives and breathes through our state laws. Elected state officials swear to uphold it. And schoolchildren learn that it provides the framework of their state government.
   
It should be readily available to anyone who wants it, right?
   
That’s probably what Michael Baynard thought when he requested a copy of it from the Pennsylvania Department of State through the state’s Right to Know Law.
   
Instead, the 37-year-old prison inmate was told he couldn’t have it.
   
Baynard, who is serving time at the State Correctional Institution at Coal Township for sex offenses, appealed to the state’s Office of Open Records. On Sept. 7, the Open Records Office ordered the State Department to send him a copy of the constitution.
   
When that appeal arrived at the Open Records Office, its executive director, Terry Mutchler, said she thought it was some kind of high jinks. Then she realized it was for real.
   
“It almost leaves me speechless,” Mutchler said. “It encapsulates some of the derision that folks have for us in government because a copy of the constitution is clearly a public record.”
   
The Department of State argued that the constitution doesn’t qualify as a record that falls under its purview since it is not a record that the department made as a result of an action it took, spokesman Ron Ruman said.
   
In defending its decision to the Open Records Office, the department also claimed it assigns act numbers to records and the request for the constitution failed to cite an act number and year.
   
But there is only one state constitution.
   
Mutchler said she couldn’t imagine a state agency not providing it.
   
“Unfortunately, when you get a request like this, it gets right to the gut of what open government is about, and it doesn’t bode well for any of us in government when we see a situation like this when there’s a denial of a copy of the constitution,” Mutchler said.
   
The State Department has decided not to appeal the Open Records Office decision, although the department’s staff counsel stands by the initial denial as correct and appropriate, Ruman said.
   
“We don’t feel it’s appropriate to expend the resources and such to appeal it, so we will provide Mr. Baynard a copy of the constitution,” Ruman said
   
Sen. Mike Folmer, R-Lebanon County, was dumbfounded upon learning of the matter.
   
Folmer carries around a pocket-sized version of the constitution wherever he goes. The more he thought about the situation, he grew increasingly angry that a state agency would deny the request, even if it came from a prisoner.
   
“He should still be able to get a copy of constitution regardless of what he’s in for,” Folmer said. “It never ceases to amaze me the asinine things we do in government. ... It’s the most open record there is.”
   
Barry Kauffman, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, called the State Department’s denial “just plain silly.”
   
“The amount of time they spent reviewing the request, making a decision about it, denying it and then having to deal with the Office of Open Records probably cost a couple hundred dollars in staff time. Where they could have just gone to the photocopier, copied the constitution and mailed it to the guy for 10 bucks,” he said.
   
Or he suggested they could have advised him that the state constitution can be found in the Pennsylvania Manual, which a Department of Corrections spokeswoman said is in state prison library collections.
   
Kauffman said, “I would hope people, in implementing the open-records law, would use some common sense.”
   
Ruman said any future Right to Know requests to the department for the state constitution will be handled on a case-by-case basis.