The Pennsylvania Newspaper Association wants to make public records more accessible.

The group is pushing for legislation to expand the state's open records law and has created a blog, passopenrecords.org, to get private citizens involved in the effort.

"This state has a long, sad tradition of keeping its citizens in the dark when it comes to information about government operations," said PNA President Tim Williams in a statement.

PNA cites a 2002 survey by a government watchdog group, Better Government Association, that ranked Pennsylvania's open records laws 48^th, tied with Alaska.

As one example, the association cited recent reports about the Pennsylvania Legislature's payment of $3.6 million in staff bonuses. Those numbers had not been disclosed previously because the General Assembly exempted itself from the open records law.

One change PNA would like to see is to make the agency prove requested information is not public, rather than forcing the requester to prove it is public.