A new battle seems to be forming over Washington County’s Local Share Account grant process and a local State Representative. 49th Legislative representative, Republican Bud Cook says he is trying to ensure the process is ‘open and fair’. He announced Monday that the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records granted his appeal to obtain records of LSA project grant recipients. Cook submitted several requests to the Washington County Redevelopment Authority seeking records on the recipients. Cook says the Authority denied those requests and he appealed. In a release, Cook said “the continued denials for public information speaks volumes….what are they trying to hide?” The Redevelopment Authority has 30 days to appeal to Commonwealth Court and Executive Director Bill McGowen tells WJPA News they will appeal. According to McGowen, Cook “has been given full access” to the records. The Authority says the issue here is that Cook wants copies of this information. Janel Yamber, the Authority’s Open Records officer, says there are more than 400 projects and it would take thousands of man-hours to go through and make copies of all of those records. She says Cook has “never been denied access to those records” and the amount of work that staff would have to complete to respond back to him would be “voluminous”.