PHMC Compliance Deadlines for Pennsylvania County Clerks in 2026

A Pennsylvania county records office is run on deadlines. Two of them matter most. The Right-to-Know Law gives an open-records officer five business days to respond to a written request. The County Records Manual sets, series by series, the date a record may finally be destroyed. Miss the first and a request is deemed denied; miss the second and the county either destroys something it was required to keep or pays to store something it could have lawfully purged.

This guide is organized around those clocks rather than around the record types other guides catalog. It walks the Right-to-Know response window from the day a request lands, through the extension and appeal stages, into the retention-and-disposal timeline, and ends with the office routine that keeps a clerk ahead of every date. The aim is practical: know exactly what the calendar requires, and never be surprised by it.

Two clocks run in every Pennsylvania county records office

Pennsylvania has 67 counties, each classified by population and each keeping its records under retention schedules approved through the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC). The County Records Manual's schedules apply to county offices of the second through eighth class, which covers nearly every county outside Philadelphia. Within that framework, a clerk is responsible for two very different timelines that are easy to confuse and costly to mix up.

The first is the access clock: when a member of the public, a journalist, or an attorney files a Right-to-Know request, the office is on a short, statutory countdown measured in business days. The second is the retention clock: every record series has a designated life, from a fixed term to permanent, after which the County Records Committee's schedule controls whether and how the record is destroyed. The access clock is short and unforgiving; the retention clock is long and quiet. A well-run office keeps both on a calendar, not in memory.

The Right-to-Know response clock: five business days from receipt

Pennsylvania is an open-records state. Under Section 901 of the Right-to-Know Law (Act 3 of 2008), an agency's open-records officer must respond to a written records request within five business days of receiving it. Business days exclude weekends and Commonwealth holidays, so the calendar date a five-day clock lands on shifts depending on when the request arrives. The clock starts on receipt, which is why a dated intake stamp is the single most important habit in the office: it fixes the day the countdown began and proves it later.

Within those five business days the officer must do one of three things: grant the request, deny it in writing with a legal basis, or invoke an extension. There is no fourth option of staying silent. A failure to respond within the window is treated as a denial — a 'deemed denial' — which hands the requester the right to appeal even though the office never actually decided anything. The table below summarizes the four deadlines that govern a single request from receipt to final determination.

When five days isn't enough: the 30-day extension and the deemed-denied trap

Some requests cannot be answered in five business days — they require legal review, redaction of exempt material, retrieval from off-site storage, or compilation of a large volume of records. Section 902 anticipates this. The office may extend the response period, but the extension is not open-ended: it must be invoked in writing within the original five business days, and it must state the specific statutory reason. The law caps that extension at 30 days.

The trap is what happens past the cap. If the office expects fulfillment to take longer than 30 days beyond the initial five-day window, the request is deemed denied unless the requester agrees in writing to a longer timeframe. An office cannot simply work at its own pace and notify the requester whenever the records are ready. Either the work fits inside the statutory extension, or the requester signs off on more time, or the clock has already run and the requester's appeal rights are live. Calendaring the extended due date the moment an extension is invoked is what prevents an honest delay from becoming a denial.

After a denial: the 15-day appeal window and the OOR's 30-day clock

A denial — whether a written refusal or a deemed denial from silence — does not end the matter; it shifts the clock to the requester. Under Section 1101(a), a requester may appeal to the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records (OOR) within 15 business days of the agency's response or deemed denial. Once that appeal is filed, Section 1101(b) puts the OOR on its own deadline: the appeals officer must issue a final determination within 30 days of receiving the appeal.

For the county office, the appeal stage is where preparation pays off. The OOR will expect the record at issue, the legal basis for any withholding or redaction, and evidence of when the request was received and when the office responded. An office that date-stamped the request, logged its response, and documented the reason for any denial can assemble that submission quickly. An office relying on memory and loose email cannot. The same intake discipline that protects the five-day clock protects the office on appeal.

The fee clock: what a county may charge, and what it may not

Fees do not extend the response deadline, but they shape how a request is fulfilled, and getting them wrong is a common source of disputes. The OOR's Official RTKL Fee Schedule caps black-and-white photocopies at $0.25 per page for the first 1,000 pages. Just as important is what an office may not charge for: under the law, no fee may be assessed for staff time, for searching for or retrieving records, or for the agency's review or its response letter. The cost of finding the record is the county's to bear, not the requester's.

For large requests, the schedule provides a release valve. An agency may require a requester to prepay an estimate of fees when the total is expected to exceed $100. In practice this lets the office pause copying until payment arrives, which keeps a 5,000-page request from consuming staff effort the requester may never pay for. The estimate should be issued promptly and in writing so the requester can decide, and so the record of the exchange is clean if the matter is later appealed.

Worked example: a request that lands on a Monday

Consider a written request that reaches a county open-records officer on a Monday morning and is date-stamped on arrival. Assuming no Commonwealth holidays fall in the window, the five-business-day response clock runs through the following Monday. The office reviews the request, determines the records require redaction of exempt personal information, and on the fifth business day issues a written extension citing that reason. That gives it up to 30 more days. It calendars the new due date immediately and fulfills the request within it. Had the office instead let the fifth day pass in silence, the request would have been deemed denied, and the requester could have appealed to the OOR within 15 business days — putting the office on the back foot defending a decision it never made.

The retention clock: when a disposal date finally arrives

The second clock runs in years, not days. Pennsylvania county records may be retained and disposed of only in accordance with retention schedules promulgated by the County Records Committee under the County Records Act, as set out in the PHMC County Records Manual. The schedule, not a clerk's judgment, decides when a record's life ends. Some series never expire: County Deed Books and Indices, County Will Books, and the official Minutes of the Board of County Commissioners or County Council (series AL-16.1) must be retained permanently for administrative, legal, and historical purposes.

Most other series carry a fixed term, after which defensible destruction is permitted — but only on the approved schedule and with the documentation to prove the record had reached the end of its retention period and was not under any legal hold. Court records add their own clock: under the AOPC retention schedule, Court of Common Pleas records should be kept for a minimum of six years following the expiration of the appeal period. The discipline here is the inverse of the access clock — instead of racing a short deadline, the office must resist destroying anything before its date and must act promptly once the date arrives so storage is not paid on records that could be lawfully purged.

The 2026 electronic-records timeline

Going digital adds a procedural deadline of its own. Counties may maintain permanent records electronically using the PDF/A format, but they must first notify the PHMC of their intent to use PDF/A for each records series — it is a per-series notification, not a blanket switch. Municipalities operate under a parallel framework: the PA Municipal Records Manual, approved December 16, 2008 and amended July 23, 2009 and March 28, 2019, governs third-class cities, boroughs, incorporated towns, and first- and second-class townships under schedules approved by the Local Government Records Committee.

The 2019 municipal update was a turning point: since then, Pennsylvania municipalities may keep permanent records exclusively in electronic PDF/A form without a paper or microfilm copy, provided the records are stored on a live server with at least one separately backed-up copy. The federal government sets the direction of travel even though it does not bind the counties. Under OMB Memorandum M-23-07, by June 30, 2024 all federal agencies had to manage permanent records electronically; after that date the National Archives no longer accepts analog transfers, and starting July 1, 2024 agencies must digitize analog permanent records before transfer, following the standards in 36 CFR Part 1236 Subpart E. A county building a digital program now is building toward where records management is already headed.

How a county office never misses a deadline

Both clocks are manageable with the same operating discipline. The point is to convert statutory dates into calendar entries the moment they are triggered, so no deadline depends on someone remembering it. A practical routine looks like this:

1. Date-stamp every request on receipt and record it in an intake log — the stamp is what proves when the five-business-day clock started.
2. Designate and train a single open-records officer so every request has a clear owner and the response, denial, or extension is issued by someone who knows the deadlines.
3. Calendar both clocks with reminders: the five-day response date and any extended due date for access requests, and an annual review date for retention and disposal.
4. Use a written prepay estimate for any request expected to exceed $100 in fees, so large jobs do not consume staff effort before the requester commits.
5. Document every denial, redaction, and disposal with its legal basis, so the office is ready if a request is appealed or a destruction is questioned.

The work has a funding source built into the law. Pennsylvania charges a $5 fee for each document recorded, on top of the Recorder of Deeds' standard fee; of that, $2 is deposited into the County Records Improvement Fund and $3 is retained by the Recorder for office records management. The fund exists in counties of the second-A, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth classes, and in home rule charter counties of those classes, expressly to support a comprehensive records management plan. The cost of not modernizing is also measurable: workers spend an estimated 20-30 percent of the workday — roughly 1.6 to 2.5 hours — searching for and gathering information, time a well-indexed digital environment gives back.

Reynolds Business Systems works with county and municipal offices across the Lehigh Valley — Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton, and the surrounding Lehigh and Northampton county seats — from its headquarters in Emmaus. The firm helps offices build the indexing, scanning, and PDF/A workflows that make a five-business-day response routine and a retention schedule easy to act on. The deadlines are fixed by statute; the office's ability to meet them is a matter of process, and process is something a county can put in place before the next request arrives.

Frequently asked questions

How many business days does a Pennsylvania agency have to respond to a Right-to-Know request?

Five business days. Under Section 901 of the Right-to-Know Law, an agency's open-records officer must respond to a written request within five business days of receiving it. Business days exclude weekends and Commonwealth holidays. Within that window the office must grant the request, deny it in writing with a legal basis, or invoke an extension — staying silent counts as a denial.

What happens if a county misses the Right-to-Know deadline?

The request is deemed denied. If the office does not respond within the five-business-day window, the law treats the silence as a denial even though no decision was made. That gives the requester the right to appeal to the Office of Open Records within 15 business days, forcing the county to defend a position it never formally took. A dated intake log is the best protection against this.

How long does the Office of Open Records have to decide an appeal?

Thirty days. Under Section 1101(b), once the Office of Open Records receives a Right-to-Know appeal, its appeals officer must issue a final determination within 30 days. The county office should use the appeal window to assemble the record at issue and the legal basis for any redaction or withholding, along with proof of when the request arrived and when it responded.

Can a county charge for public records in Pennsylvania?

Yes, but only for limited costs. The OOR fee schedule caps black-and-white photocopies at $0.25 per page for the first 1,000 pages. No fee may be charged for staff time, for searching or retrieving records, or for the agency's review and response. For requests expected to exceed $100 in fees, an agency may require the requester to prepay an estimate before fulfilling the request.

Is Pennsylvania an open records state?

Yes. Pennsylvania's Right-to-Know Law (Act 3 of 2008) presumes that records of state and local agencies, including counties, are public unless a specific exemption applies. The law puts the burden on the agency to justify withholding and sets firm deadlines — a five-business-day response window and a defined appeal process through the Office of Open Records — so access is not left to an office's discretion.

How long must Pennsylvania counties keep records?

It depends on the record series. Retention is set by the County Records Committee under the County Records Act, in the PHMC County Records Manual covering counties of the second through eighth class. Some series are permanent — deed books, will books, and commissioner minutes among them — while most others carry a fixed term. Court of Common Pleas records run a minimum of six years after the appeal period.

Is there a single 7-year or 30-year retention rule for PA county records?

No. There is no blanket 7-year or 30-year rule for Pennsylvania county records. Retention is assigned series by series in the PHMC County Records Manual. Many core series are permanent, others carry shorter fixed terms, and court records have a minimum of six years after the appeal period. The correct retention always comes from the schedule for the specific series, not a single figure.

Who approves county records retention schedules in Pennsylvania?

The County Records Committee, acting under the County Records Act, promulgates the retention and disposition schedules that appear in the PHMC County Records Manual. Counties may retain and dispose of records only in accordance with those schedules. The manual applies to county offices of the second through eighth class, which covers nearly every Pennsylvania county outside Philadelphia.

What is the PA County Records Manual?

It is the reference, published through the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, that sets how long each county record series must be kept and when it may be destroyed. Its schedules are promulgated by the County Records Committee under the County Records Act and apply to county offices of the second through eighth class. It is the controlling authority for both retention and defensible destruction.

Can Pennsylvania municipalities keep permanent records electronically?

Yes. Since the 2019 update to the Municipal Records Manual, municipalities may keep permanent records exclusively in electronic PDF/A form without a paper or microfilm copy, provided the records sit on a live server with at least one separately backed-up copy. Counties may also keep permanent records in PDF/A, but must first notify the PHMC of that intent for each records series.