TULPEHOCKEN — A Berks County township has turned over drafts of a proposed agriculture law to a farmer after spending thousands of tax dollars in a legal fight to keep them secret — even after the township had abandoned its effort to enact the law.
Farmer John Schueller said he felt vindicated by the result, but was disappointed it took about a year and cost so much. He and fellow Tulpehocken Township residents spent an estimated $5,000 of their own money to access documents an independent state agency decided they were entitled to.
The case highlights a flaw in Pennsylvania’s open records law, a transparency expert told Spotlight PA. Unlike some other states, Pennsylvania does not require governments to reimburse citizens who successfully fight wrongful records denials in court. This creates a financial deterrent.
“Most citizens do not have the means to battle their government in court,” said Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, of which Spotlight PA is a member.
The decision to release the drafts comes after Berks County Judge J. Benjamin Nevius in February ordered that the proposed law should be made public, upholding a state Office of Open Records ruling.
The measure in question would have regulated agritourism, short-term rentals, and agritainment.
Between July and January 2026, Tulpehocken Township spent at least $3,776 fighting Schueller’s request for copies of the proposal, Spotlight PA’s previous reporting found. The full cost could not be determined because some charges were billed for “right-to-know response” or “OOR appeal” and Spotlight PA could not verify they applied to Schueller specifically.
The records fight started in February 2025 when Tulpehocken Township supervisors began discussing the ordinance.
They refused to provide copies to Schueller, who told Spotlight PA he felt he could not fully take part in the discussions because he was not well-informed on all the proposed details. He later appealed to the OOR, an independent state agency, and won.
But the township appealed to the Berks County Court of Common Pleas — an outcome that happens in only about 5% of cases, according to the OOR.
In its legal filings, the township maintained that the agritourism law draft was exempt from public disclosure, saying it was only presented for discussion and it was not yet ready for action. The township also argued that the draft was not a public document because it had not been formally advertised for a public hearing as required by the state Municipalities Planning Code.
In his decision, Nevius said “this argument raises a nuanced question.” But Nevius ruled that the Municipalities Planning Code does not govern whether a document is a public record under the state’s Right-to-Know Law. The Berks County judge also said the proposed ordinance should be public because officials listed it on the agenda and reviewed it in a public meeting.
Melewsky, the attorney with the news media association, said other agencies should pay attention to the ruling. She said the goal of the Right-to-Know Law is to have people who attend public meetings be able to read the same documents that their elected officials, who are in front of them, are reading, discussing, and acting on.
“That's so that people can give meaningful, informed input before decisions are made,” Melewsky said.
Townships should always be handing out draft ordinances that they discuss to any resident who asks for them, Melewsky said.
In February, after the court ruling, Tulpehocken Township Secretary Kathryn Judy told Spotlight PA, “the township is disappointed in the decision. It is evaluating its response and options. As this involves litigation, there will be no further comment at this time.”
Then in March, nearly a year after the ordinance discussions first began, the township released the drafts, Schueller said. The township did not respond to Spotlight PA’s questions about the release as of late April. The township has also dropped a related open records case.
While the release of the documents is a win for Schueller, he would have preferred to have received them sooner — and without both sides having to spend thousands of dollars.
“Individually, it's costing us money, and then, through no control of our own, our tax money is being wasted fighting against ourselves,” Schueller said.
Melewsky noted that some other states have mandatory fee shifting so that if residents are forced to litigate against government-funded lawyers and win, the government has to reimburse the resident. Instead, Pennsylvania’s open records law allows a court to award attorney fees and costs if it finds an agency acted in bad faith or had an unreasonable interpretation of the law.
“In practice, the courts almost never do that, which means that requesters are forced to personally finance litigation against teams of taxpayer funded lawyers to challenge RTKL denials, with almost no chance of being reimbursed if they win,” Melewsky said. “That’s a huge barrier to citizens enforcing the law, and it encourages denials and noncompliance.”
Melewsky said it’s a shortcoming in the law that needs to be changed legislatively.
In the Tulpehocken Township case, the judge declined to award attorneys’ fees, saying the municipality “advanced a reasonable, non-frivolous interpretation of the governing law.”
In March, Schueller said he had received the draft ordinances but had not had the chance to fully go through them.
The township eventually dropped the agriculture ordinance from consideration.
But Schueller said he believes the discussion on a new ordinance about agritourism, short-term rentals, and agritainment will come up again eventually. Having the drafts now allows him to be prepared and see how the ordinance proposal evolved previously. It also reinforces his belief that the residents had the right to this information all along.
“If you don't stand up for yourself pretty soon the leadership in the municipality finds that they can manipulate their residents into believing that they don't have any right to participate,” Schueller said.