Yawn

Back in 2002, the Harrisburg Patriot-News came up with an ingenious means to find out Joe Paterno's salary which wasn't directly covered by the Pennsylvania Right-To-Know law, because the law does not cover Penn State. Joe, you see, participates in the Sate Employees Retirement System (SERS) which is covered by the state's Right-To-Know law. The Patriot-New requested the information from SERS. Of course, Old Main fought back. Finally five years latter, the state supreme court sided with the Patriot-News and yesterday Paterno's base salary was made public.

Was this a victory for open government? Not really. The figure released yesterday, $512,000, was only Paterno's base salary. One is left to speculate about bonuses, contracts with companies such as Nike, and other forms of compensation. If one wants to make sense of Paterno's salary one must compare it to the salary of his peers, but such a comparison is nearly impossible since the salaries reported for his peers are their complete compensation. The best comparison I've seen was to Arizona coach Dennis Erickson where the comparison was to both his base salary and total compensation.

Coaches are typically eligible for bonuses based on their records and appearances in post-season bowl games, as well as for the classroom performance of their players. Dennis Erickson of the University of Arizona can make as much as $1.2 million in bonuses, almost twice his $625,000 salary.

This suggests that it is possible that Paterno's base salary is as little as half of his total compensation by the University, but we really don't know. The fact that such speculation is still necessary after this information was made public, points to the inadequacy of our Right-To-Know law.

The citizens of Pennsylvania deserve unambiguous answers to such questions as, how much does Joe Paterno make? On that front, the real action is in the General Assembly where both the House and the Senate have passed revisions to the Pennsylvania Right-To-Know law which strengthens and extends it coverage to state-related universities, such as Penn State. The battle over Paterno's salary was just a sideshow.


Technorati Tags: Paterno's Salary, Right-To-Know, Penn State

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How Much Did the Jen Harris Settlement Cost Penn State?

Yesterday it was reported in the LATimes that,

Karen Moe Humphreys, a former Olympic gold medal swimmer who became a coach and administrator at UC Berkeley, will receive more than $3.5 million to settle a gender discrimination lawsuit she brought against the university, the UC Board of Regents agreed Thursday.

Humphreys, who worked at UC Berkeley from 1978 until she was laid off in 2004, alleged that she lost her job in retaliation for complaining about the treatment of women by the university's athletic department.

Under the agreement, Humphreys will be reinstated and then retire in January when she reaches 30 years with the university. She said the $3.5 million will go entirely to cover her attorney fees and legal costs.

But earlier this year when former Penn State Lady Lions basketball player Jennifer Harris settled a similar lawsuit which she brought against Penn State, her former coach Rene Portland, university President Graham Spanier, and athletic director Tim Curley the terms of the settlement remained confidential. This is a standard practice at Penn State, which can happen because, as regular readers of this blog surely know, Pennsylvania's Right-To-Know law doesn't cover Penn State and other state-related universities.

It may, nonetheless, be possible to estimate a ballpark figure on the settlement amount when the next Stairs report is issued sometime in the winter or early spring of 2009. In this post, I'll explain how to get an upper bound on the amount the University had to pay Harris and along the way give some upper bounds on past settlement fees the University has paid out, but kept secret.

The each Stair report gives the total legal expenses for Penn State for the previous fiscal year. The report doesn't explain how this number is arrived at but it is reasonable to assume that it is the sum of a several terms including, lawyers fees, court costs, fines, settlement amounts, etc,... These reports also give a list of all large payments for good and services. This happens to include the amount paid to the University's law firm McQuade-Blasko. As you will soon see, the payments to McQuade-Blasko are fairly stable over time, but the total legal expenses vary wildly, as one would expect of court costs, fines, settlement payments, ect,.... Hence by subtracting off the amount paid to McQuade-Blasko from the total legal expenses for a given fiscal year one arrives at, what is likely, an upper bound for settlement payments for the year.

The following table summarizes these expenses.

Fiscal Year	Att. Fees	Uncat.	Total
94-95	$2,379,547	$0	$2,379,547
95-96	$2,698,531	$1,500,766	$4,199,297
96-97	$2,930,614	$956,353	$3,886,967
97-98	$3,041,353	$104,159	$3,145,512
98-99	$3,682,431	$5,158,008	$8,840,439
99-00	$3,506,531	$1,048,853	$4,555,384
00-01	$3,257,627	$494,575	$3,752,202
01-02	$3,016,559	$130,937	$3,147,496
02-03	$3,356,661	$1,847,318	$5,203,979
03-04	$2,794,878	$247,640	$3,042,518
04-05	$3,078,122	$272,207	$3,350,329
05-06	$2,811,812	$2,699,730	$5,511,542
	Penn State	Legal Exp.

The second column is the payment made to McQuade-Blasko each year, as reported by Penn State to the state. The fourth column is the amount of legal expenses Penn State has reported to the state each year. The third column is the difference of the fourth and second columns. This is the amount of uncategorized legal expenses which Penn State has incurred during each of the fiscal years. The following graph gives a better idea of what is going on here.



The first thing to note on the graph is that the only legal expenses Penn State reported during the 94-95 fiscal year were its attorney fees. This was the fiscal year prior to Spanier's arrival at Penn State. It would be wrong to conclude, without knowledge of legal expenditures in years before 94-95, that Spanier policies were responsible for the subsequent rise in legal costs. It is just as likely that the outgoing president Joab Thomas chose to let his successor deal with any pending legal actions.

In Spanier's first year the uncategorized cost were $1.50 million. That year the University settled a defamation lawsuit against it brought by three professors who were each asking for $5 million. Of course, the terms of the settlement weren't made public. Now we can see that the upper bound on the settlement amount is $1.50 million or $500,000 per plaintiff.

The 96-97 fiscal year saw the uncategorized expenses drop to $0.96 million. The added costs may have been due to a tax settlement between the University and Centre County. In this case, the terms of the settlement were released because it was with a government entity.

The agreement calls for the University to pay about $1 million each year to be divided between State College Borough, Ferguson Township, and Harris Township, as well as the State College Area School District in-lieu of taxes.

The uncategorized expense are in line with the terms of this settlement, but it is not clear that this money would have been reported under legal expenses.

The next fiscal year saw a dramatic drop in the uncategorized expenses to $0.10 million and a search of the Collegian didn't turn up settled lawsuit that year.

The fiscal year 98-99 was a biggie for uncategorized expenses; these expenses shot up to $5.19 million. This one is a mystery to me. I cannot find any lawsuit settlements for that year. There may have been a suit brought against Penn State outside of the Centre Region which was never reported on here. For example, one possibility is that the spike is associated with the disastrous merger , which Spanier once characterized as "truly a national model", between Penn State Hershey Health Center and the Geisinger Health System which was undone the following year. This is all speculation. If you have any idea what caused this spike leave it in the comments.

At the turn of the century, the uncategorized cost were down to $1.05 million. Again I found nada in the way of legal settlement for this fiscal year. Again, little help from the readers would be appreciated. The uncategorized expenses were below a half million for the next two fiscal year and jumped $1.85 million in fiscal year 02-03. Some of that is accounted for by this settlement the terms of which were made public.

Penn State has agreed to an out-of-court settlement with a sexual assault victim who claimed the university did not protect her from harassment and intimidation following her assault in August 1999.

The terms of the settlement, filed in District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania this week, awarded $17,500 to the woman who was only identified as "Jane Doe."

There was also this from that year, but no word on any settlement.

A 51-year-old mushroom scientist with a genetic joint defect has accused Penn State of age and/or job discrimination stemming from a 2001 job search, according to court documents filed in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh.

The next two fiscal years, once again, had rather low uncategorized costs.

In the final fiscal year covered in these reports 05-06 the uncategorized costs went up to $2.70 million which makes it year for the second highest uncategorized costs. The University was sued that year (also here) the former head of the Philosophy Department Mitchell Aboulafia and the suit was settled out of court.

A Penn State professor who claimed he was illegally de moted is settling his case against the university, according to court filings. Mitchell Aboulafia, 54, was the head of the philosophy department from July 2003 until March 2004, when officials in the College of the Liberal Arts took away the leadership position.

As usual the terms were not made public, but word on the street is that Aboulafia did quite well in the settlement. We now know that the upper bound on the settlement is $2.70 million.

That brings me to the end of this little adventure in accountability. Next winter we can try to estimate the what the Harris lawsuit settlement cost the University.

But the more important thing about this exercise is that it illustrates how little useful information the Stairs reports give the citizens of Pennsylvania concerning the operations of Penn State. It took a great deal of sleuthing on my part to put this post together and the whole thing amounts to little more than a bunch of tenuous inferences with gapping holes. That is no way to hold an institution accountable. We need a new Right-To-Know law which will cover Penn State and other state-related universities.


Technorati Tags: Penn State, Rene Portland, Jen Harris, Lawsuits, Settlement Amounts

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Breaking: Napster for Less than $750,000/Year at Penn State

Last month, during a State Senate Committee hearing on Sen. Domenic Pileggi's Right-To-Know legislation, Graham asserted that the citizens of the Commonwealth already know enough about Penn State's finances.

First, perhaps you are not aware, but Penn State already opens its financial books to you and the public. The online version alone represents 5,000 pages of budget detail. In fact, every year, as required by The Higher Education Fiscal Information Disclosure Act, we deliver detailed reports on our finances to the General Assembly and post the same information on our Web site. These reports (described in detail in an addendum) answer nearly every conceivable question about how we spend taxpayers' funds except for the individual salaries of our employees.

I've discussed this testimony in a previous post. Here is a list of what the University reports to the General Assembly.

• The academic and administrative budgets for current and prior years including revenue and expenditures;
• The number of employees by academic rank and number of administrators, and staff;
• The median and mean salaries of administrators, faculty and staff;
• The non-salary compensation of administrators, faculty and staff;
• A statement of the institution's retirement policies;
• A policy statement on reduction of tuition for employee's family members;
• Service contracts including legal, instructional, management accounting, architecture, public relations and maintenance;
• A list of goods and services in excess of $1,000; and
• A list, by unit, of expenses of travel.

You can find what the University posts online here. Although Penn State is required to report "[a] list of goods and services in excess of $1,000", they don't put this list online. So much for Penn State's commitment to transparency.

Fortunately, this info can be found elsewhere, Each year since 1996, the Joint State Government Commission uses the data reported by Penn State and the other state-related universities to prepare a document referred to as the Stairs Report. I've just discovered that they now post these reports online. Here are the links to all of the past reports. (When I get sometime I'll put these links over in the righthand column.)

• 1996
• 1997
• 1998
• 1999
• 2000
• 2001
• 2002
• 2003
• 2004
• 2005
• 2006
• 2007

Each report deals with the previous fiscal year. My first impression is that these reports are much easier to navigate than the stuff Penn State places online, but that is only half of it. While the Stairs Reports don't have the entire list for each year, the reports do have the list for each years largest contracts . From 1995 to 2003 all contract of $500,000 or more are listed. From 2004 on, only contracts of $750,000 or more are listed.


Here is a conceivable question, how much has Penn State been paying for Napster? The 2004-2005 academic year was the first full year of the Napster service. This is covered by the 2005 Stairs Report. Napster isn't listed amongst those services for which Penn State has paid $750,000 or more in this or subsequent reports. This tells us that the University has been paying less that three quarters of a million dollars for the Napster service. But is it $499,999, or $1001? These reports don't tell us.

In my next post, I will use these reports to get a partial answer to another previously unanswered question about the way that Penn State spends our money. This one, I am sure will get everyones attention. Stay Tuned.

Technorati Tags: Penn State, Right-To-Know, Stairs Reports, Pennsylvania, Spanier, Napster
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Lloyd Huck Tries to Undo Graham's Damage.

Today JamieB at Passopenrecords.org points us to a letter to the Harrisburg Patriot News written by Lloyd Huck, former chair of the Penn State Board of Trustees, University benefactor, and retired CEO of Merck Pharmaceuticals, which concerns the extension of Pennsylvania's Right-To-Know law to state-related universities. Its conciliatory tone is in marked contrast to Graham's hostile performance of three weeks ago. Here is the letter in its entirety.

I wish to comment on two issues regarding discussions on extending the right to know legislation to state-related institutions, specifically the Pennsylvania State University.

I'm an emeritus trustee of Penn State and a retired board chairman of Merck, Co., Inc.

Because of my philanthropy to Penn State and my experience with intellectual property issues, I am concerned about the impact of requiring Penn State to make public information on these matters.

Some donors may be reluctant to make major gifts to Penn State, or to other institutions, if their gifts are made public. I believe they should have the right to keep these gifts confidential if they so wish. Any extension of the
right to know legislation should protect this right.

The first purpose of patents is to protect the rights of the inventor. The second purpose is to make the patent
public to enable further research, which is in the best interest of the public. If information on the research is made public before the patent issues, the inventor is
injured and will prefer to keep his work confidential rather than pursuing a patent, which eventually becomes public.

I am a strong supporter of transparency on the part of public institutions. I believe that Penn State makes available all information important for the public to know. But, legislators should be careful not to trample the rights of privacy in these two areas.

Lloyd does his best here to tone things down. He makes it appear that he's in general agreement with the idea of letting the sunshine in at Old Main. He really only has two concerns, donor privacy and patent disclosures. But other than that, lets open the windows wide. A close reading of the letter, however, shows that this is far from the case. Sure he's a strong supporter of transparency on the part of public institutions, but keep reading. In the very next sentence he tells us that Penn State makes available all information important for the public to know. We should be clear that he is in favor of the status quo. He hasn't given any ground. Lloyd is just a little slicker than Graham.

While I am talking about slick, I should note that he's got his facts on patents backwards. The US Constitution is the basis for all patent law in this country. It addresses the concept of patents in Article One, Section 8, clause 8.

Congress shall have power ... to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.

There is not a a word about the privacy of the inventor. The purpose of the patent system is to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. The patent system is set up as a public, not a private, good, just as Penn State is supposed to be for the public, not the private, good. Of course, it is of no surprise that a corporate fat cat wouldn't see it that way.

I've been following Old Main for quite sometime. It would behoove those interested in getting Right-To-Know legislation passed which covers state-related universities not to let their guard down because some sweet talker tells you how much he loves transparency on the part of public institutions.

The Patriot New carried a second letter about Penn State and the new Right-To-Know legislation the day that it published Lloyd's letter, but JamieB didn't link to it. It actually was a much better letter. I will close this post with it.

Penn State President Graham Spanier offered a very humorous commentary (June 10) on right-to-know legislation as it impacts Penn State, Pittsburgh, Temple and Lincol University.

He has a point. The legislation should address every university and college in the state, not just the four selected.

And, with the force of his arguments, I sense a great second career at PHEAA once he finishes holding down tuition and hiding public information at Penn State.

-- AL PETERLIN, Hampden Twp.

An "Unintended Negative Consequence"

We all know that Graham is adamant about Penn State not being covered any new Right-To-Know law and he has given a laundry list of reasons for his opposition. But are his stated reason the only ones? Or could the prospect of something like this be lurking in the back of his head when he talks about the "profound negative impact on Pennsylvania's state-related research universities," of a new Right-To-Know law?

A former treasurer of Ohio State University inflated the size of the institution’s endowment in his reports, but an independent audit by Deloitte Financial Advisory Services has found no evidence of fraud or misappropriation of the money, The Columbus Dispatch reported today.

The former official, James Nichols, retired on December 31. According tothe audit, he misled donors and trustees, reporting to them that the endowment was about $500-million larger in 2005 than it really was. He included operating-fund investments and donated money in that figure, amounts that should have been accounted for separately.

Mr. Nichols also failed to follow university policy when he did not sell $30-million worth of donated stock in Cardinal Health Inc. as quickly as he should have. By the time it was sold, in 2006, it had lost $3.8-million in value, according to the Dispatch, which obtained the Deloitte audit through a public-records request.

I am sure when Graham reads this story, and since it is in the Chronicles of Higher Education he surely will, he'll be thinking, "damn nosy reporters."

Technorati Tags: Pennsylvania, Penn State, Right-To-Know, Spanier, Ohio State, Audit

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Theives Tend to Be Indigent When They Are About to be Revealed

Today's CDT has a story which places a bit of Graham's indigent testimony on Monday in a new light. Here is what Graham told the State Senate,

Senate Bill 1 will severely limit the University's opportunity to enter into contracts with outside entities that do not permit the terms of their agreements to become public due to competitive concerns (examples include our lucrative partnerships with Nike, Highmark, Pepsi, Barnes and Noble, and others).

Read this carefully. He is not concerned about the public finding out how much Penn State gets from these contracts or what they give in return should a new Right-To-Know law cover the University. He is concerned that Penn State won't be able to be able honor secrecy agreements with corporations should it be covered by a new Right-To-Know law. It about honoring agreements. The CDT story put the lie to this.

Penn State has an in lieu of real estate tax agreement with Centre County. Today Mike Joesph reports in the CDT that,

After months of being "polite," Centre County's government has formally notified a top Penn State administrator that the university has breached a financial agreement for payments in lieu of real estate taxes.

In a May 3letter from county solicitor Louis Glantz to Gary Schultz, Penn State senior vice president for finance and business, the county gives the university 60 days to pay almost $270,000 in payments in lieu of taxes on a visitors center, a book store and a restaurant or face "all available legal and equitable remedies.

[...]

The letter advises Schultz of a "a "serious breach" in the "amended settlement agreement," an agreement between Penn State, State College and the townships of Patton, Ferguson and Harris for Penn State payments to taxing authorities in amounts equal to real estate taxes but called "in-lieu-of tax payments.

"In order to determine the amount of payment, the agreement says, Penn State "shall provide the county a copy of the description of real estate contained in a lease within 30 days of the execution of the lease and shall submit to the county the information required by law for the establishment of the assessed value of the leased real estate ... ."

[...]

Boyde said the "amended settlement agreement" calls for the university to provide lease information to the county so that the county, not the university, can determine whether what has been leased is taxable.

Exarchos and Boyde said Glantz has been discussing the issue with Penn State officials since February, but the talks have gotten nowhere.

Boyde said the Board of Commissioners took the step to formally notify the Penn State administration because "it finally got to the point where we were tired of asking."

"We tried the polite ways and it doesn't seem to be working," Exarchos said. "How many other leases that they have not turned over are there that we are not aware of?... It dawned on me and us that there are monetary consequences here by their not living up to the settlement agreement."Glantz said Friday that in discussions Penn State has sought to defend its decision not to provide lease information by making a distinction between leases and "operating agreements."Asked what's the difference, Glantz said: "You tell me."

Penn State was required by the in lieu of tax agreement to turn over all lease agreements to the County. It then violated this requirement with a semantic game. It started to classify the lease agreements as "operating agreements" and then didn't turn them over to the County. This could happen because there is currently no legal requirement for Penn State to make these agreements public regardless of what Penn State decides to call them.

The specific lesson to take away from this is the need for new stronger Right-To-Know which covers Penn State and other state-related universities. The broader lesson is that Old Main cannot be trusted.

Everything Old is New Again

[Editor's Note: The introduction to the post has been revised. I should know better than to read things late at night.]

I was surfing the web last night looking for commentary on Graham's balls-to-the-wall State Senate testimony concerning Senator Peliggi's Right-To-Know legislation when I came across a nine year old Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article posted on a Miami University of Ohio listserve. The story, which concerns a bid rigging scandal at the state-related Lincoln University,went into the history of efforts to extend Pennsylvania's Right-To-Know law to state-related universities.

The bid rigging scandal might explain why Lincoln University did not weigh in on Monday on Pileggi's legislation. The state-related schools may not have wanted to risk that Lincoln's presence would trigger someone's memory of that scandal.

Here is the article in its entirety. It should drive home what is at stake in the battle to shine a light on the recesses of Old Main and the other state-related schools

Schools exempt from scrutiny
By Bill Schackner, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The resignation of Lincoln University's president amidcharges of bid rigging and mismanagement has once again raised a question that has been asked in Pennsylvania for years.

If taxpayers shell out tens of millions of dollars to help run universities,
do they have a right to see for themselves how their money is spent?

The answer consistently has been "no" when it pertains to Lincoln and three other schools -- the University of Pittsburgh, Penn State University and Temple University. Together, they receive more than half a billion dollars in state aid each year, yet much of their operations are shielded from public view.

Want to know how much Penn State pays Joe Paterno to coach football? Sorry, that's private.

Want to see documents that would explain why Pitt chose one food service vendor over another? Chances are, that's off limits, too.

The four schools submit to yearly audits and turn over limited financial data to the Legislature. But unlike full state universities and government agencies, these four schools, known as state-related institutions, are generally exempt from open-records laws.

Their trustees' boards are made up mostly of private citizens, and the fact that they get tax money does not change their status as private, nonprofit corporations, the state Supreme Court has ruled. As such, they "are not required to make public records available for examination."

Critics, though, say the arrangement allows the schools to have it both ways-- sometimes at the public's expense.

"They play both sides of the game," said Barry Kauffman, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, which advocates a stronger Right To Know law. "They want to be covered by state funding laws when it's time to receive money, but when it's time to disclose how that money is spent, they don't want to becovered by state disclosure laws."

It's unclear if problems at Lincoln, which were discovered by employees, would have come to light sooner had the public been able to ask for documents showing how Lincoln awarded contracts and paid its bills. But the issue is likely to get close scrutiny in the months ahead.

Even before the Lincoln scandal surfaced, state Education Secretary Eugene Hickok had talked within his agency about the possibility of giving the public open access to data on tax dollars that flow into these quasi-public universities, Education Department spokesman Dan Langan said.

Facing a fight

"We do it for lower education. Perhaps it's time to start applying a very similar principle to higher education -- at least the commonwealth's
investment in higher education," Langan said.

If the secretary starts down that path, he's in for a long, hard fight.

Just ask state Rep. Ron Cowell, D-Wilkins, minority chairman of the House Education Committee, who wrote the state's first ethics law 20 years ago and is a former Pitt trustee.

After a public outcry in 1991 over the size of a retirement package given to then-Pitt President Wesley Posvar, Cowell introduced legislation to bring Pitt and the other state-related schools under the state's Right to Know law.

The bill passed the House, and the governor promised to sign it. But it died in the Senate.

In the years that followed, Cowell introduced amendments that would have tied all four schools' appropriations to their willingness to submit to the Right to Know law.

That effort failed, too.

What ultimately passed about four years ago was a far less sweeping legislative amendment to those schools' annual appropriations bill. It
requires that the schools each year give the governor and Legislature books of raw data on such items as expenditures and revenues by department, vendor payments and average faculty salaries on campus.

Cowell had wanted much more.

He said he was disappointed that, as legislators, "We haven't had the good sense to take what I consider to be a very modest step to promote more public accountability for a significant amount of tax dollars."

"I don't believe anyone is a crook, but I do believe the likelihood of public scrutiny influences your behavior, personally and as an institution," Cowell
said.

The idea "that somebody is watching over your shoulder" is a strong deterrent to misbehavior, he said.

"The paradox is that we have legislators who, on the one hand, insist that we ought to have more accountability with respect to higher education and we ought to demand more efficiency and more effectiveness, but many of those same legislators will vote against what I consider to be a really simple tool --public disclosure," Cowell said.

The universities, though, say the data they now must provide amounts to ample disclosure. They say there are enough safeguards against abuse already in place.

Schools defend access

Pitt, for instance, says it now submits to the governor and Legislature
hundreds of pages of financial data each year. Copies are kept in the library where they can be reviewed by the public, Pitt spokesman Ken Service said.

Beyond that, the state auditor general every year reviews the state's
appropriation to the university, which at $158.2 million is about 18 percent of its budget. The university's entire operation is monitored by internal auditors and by an outside firm, whose annual report to the school's trustees is made public.

"We are confident that we are both providing sufficient information to the various governmental bodies and that we have safeguards in place to ensure that we are operating in an ethical manner," Service said. "We do account very well for the dollars that we receive."

Penn State President Graham Spanier said his school also releases sufficient data to the state and puts its budget online.

He said Penn State "is able to operate a much better university for the people of the state" without the Right to Know law.

Existing policies allow "a very, very, high degree of openness and
accountability" without "having a situation where we lose a faculty member or can't recruit a faculty member because their salary is being publicly debated," he said.

Some legislators agree.

State Sen. Vincent Fumo, D-Philadelphia, said he sees no need to expand the open-records law to Pitt, Temple and Penn State and doesn't want what happened at Lincoln to penalize those schools, said his spokesman, Gary Tuma. Fumo's office began an investigation and hired an accountant after getting complaints from Lincoln employees about work done on the president's campus home.

Tuma said the senator doesn't believe the open-records law would have made a difference in the Lincoln case because the Legislature and auditor general ultimately got the documents they needed.

"If you're suggesting that (the open records Law) would be a deterrent, people ought to be deterred anyway because that information can be obtained" by the Legislature and state auditors, Tuma said.

Lincoln's routine audits, however, apparently weren't enough to uncover the information that eventually led President Niara Sudarkasa to submit her resignation last week.

They involve her spending and accounting practices and those of Sudarkasa's husband, John Clark, former director of maintenance and construction operations at the school west of Philadelphia.

Lincoln's problems

Pennsylvania Auditor General Robert P. Casey Jr. concluded this month after an eight-month investigation that the school had been victimized by bid-rigging, administrative waste and mismanagement.

According to the allegations, Sudarkasa and her husband spent $531,694 to renovate the presidential residence without the knowledge of the full board of trustees. Also alleged is that Sudarkasa improperly received $34,000 in university money for legal help with her personal tax problems.

Casey, in a report, concluded that the campus operation that Clark had run offered preferred treatment to certain companies instead of seeking out the lowest bidder. Two office secretaries who worked under Clark said he ordered them to type bids and invoices for a private firm that wound up doing work for Lincoln, Casey said.

If Lincoln were covered under the Right to Know Law, those invoices and contracts would be public records. Anyone could have seen them, along with documents related to work on the president's home.

But as things stand now, such records are released only if the school chooses to do so, said John Feichtel, general counsel for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Publishers' Association, another group pressing the case for a stronger Right to Know law.

"If they do it now, it's voluntary," he said. "That's why we're concerned
about bringing them under the law.

"The purpose of the Right to Know is the public can act as a check and balance system against those agencies to make sure they are spending their money appropriately," Feichtel said.

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Open to Change

There are currently several Right-To-Know bills floating through the legislature in Harrisburg. All of them, with the exception of the bill introduced by State Senator Dominic Pileggi, begin with the assumption that a record is public. At least that was the case until Monday afternoon. Following the a Senate hearing on his bill Pileggi announced that he has decided to amend his bill to flip the presumption. This is excellent news.

The debate will now focus on the definition of public records, carving out exceptions, what entities will be covered,enforcement, penalties, etc..... So the war is not over, but a major battle has been won.

Technorati Tags: Pennsylvania, sunshine, right-to-know, Penn State, Pileggi
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Graham Swings Wildly

Graham really is concerned about having to be more open with the citizens of Pennsylvania. Here are his remarks to the State Senate on Dominic Pileggi's (R-Delaware County) Right-To-Know legislation along with my comments in the fashion of SOS.

Good morning, Chairman Piccola and members of the State Government Committee. Thank you for this opportunity to comment on Senate Bill 1, which seeks to amend the State's Right-to-Know law in ways that will have a profound negative impact [Tell us how you really feel.] on Pennsylvania's state-related research universities.



First, perhaps you are not aware, but Penn State already opens its financial books to you and the public. The online version alone represents 5,000 pages of [largely uninformative] budget detail. In fact, every year, as required by The Higher Education Fiscal Information Disclosure Act, we deliver detailed reports on our finances to the General Assembly and post the same information on our Web site. These reports (described in detail in an addendum) answer nearly every conceivable question about how we spend taxpayers' funds except for the individual salaries of our employees.[Here is an exercise for the readers. Follow the links to the budget and try to find out how much the University spent to hold a Trustees meeting in New York City in November of 2004. Also see if you can find out who or what organization donated money to help defray the cost. This is relevant since it could have been someone or entity (RIAA?) with business before the University. I won't sit arround and wait to see what you find.] Let me make myself perfectly clear -- this proposal goes far beyond making Penn State accountable for how it spends public funds. Nobody would argue the point that the public has a right to know how public funds are spent [...,but I will.] But this bill will fundamentally change the way we operate, the way our trustees govern, and the way I administer their policies.[In the same way that the successful lawsuit opening up PHEAA's finances has changed the way they do business.] Frankly, we will have to operate in a way that will make us less nimble and less competitive with the other major research universities in the nation. [When administrators start talking about nimbleness and competitiveness what they really mean is that they are worried that they will have to justify the unjustifiable]



The fiscal information disclosure requirements in our annual appropriations bill currently provide the right balance of access to information and public accountability without adding crippling new costs, which would diminish the excellence of the University and make it less competitive nationally. It remains the most appropriate mechanism to guarantee higher education accountability and public access to information.[Don't you think his language is a bit over wrought. One might think that he has something to hide.]



Adding state-related universities to the Right-to-Know law would have serious unintended consequences not in the best interests of the Commonwealth . I worry about the creation of a new and expensive bureaucracy to control and process requests for information (and perhaps extensive and expensive litigation over the law's meaning and effect).

Examples of unintended negative consequences of applying Right-to-Know provisions to state-related universities are:

• By opening all files to the public, including vendors, the University would suffer a substantial loss of competitive leverage in negotiating contracts for the purchase of goods and services, leading to increased financial and operational costs.[The word on the street is that vendors that get contracts with the University have it made in the shade, because Penn State buys only the best. I don't know if that is true, but opening things up would reveal if it were.]
• Revenues from the lease and sale of intellectual property would likely fall, since if the terms of such agreements became public, prospective corporate partners would be reluctant to pay any more than the lowest-paying partner.[Could the lowest paying partner have some sort of inappropriate sweetheart deal with the University? Opening things up would answer that question.]
• Senate Bill 1 could block the University's opportunity to invest its endowment in various attractive funds, which will not permit their specific investment strategies and holdings to be publicly disclosed. We have already been so notified by some of our investment funds.[This is a good one. In fact, the US Senate is a bit concerned about universities which enjoy tax-exempt status investing in some questionable funds.Graham may be testifying before the US Senate very soon.]
• Senate Bill 1 will severely limit the University's opportunity to enter into contracts with outside entities that do not permit the terms of their agreements to become public due to competitive concerns (examples include our lucrative partnerships with Nike, Highmark, Pepsi, Barnes and Noble, and others).[Graham you can't be serious, can you? Your relationship with corporate America is more important to you than your relationship with the citizens of Pennsylvania who, by the way, provide you with far more money than these contract do. What about questionable aspects of these deals?]
• Each year Penn State spins out companies and licenses technology. The details of the deals surrounding licensing fees, royalty structure and equity stake vary with each technology. If the details of these deals were publicly available, the ability to negotiate the best terms would be compromised. Senate Bill 1 would make Pennsylvania's public research universities, and as a result the Commonwealth, less attractive for such partnerships. This would hurt Pennsylvania's economic development goals. [Universities are supposed serve the public good. In fact, the justification for these corporate deals is that they provide the holy grail of jobs. Are the costs of such deals higher than their benefits to the Commonwealth? Do the benefits trickle down? I think the citizens have a right to know.]
• Penn State ranks second in the nation in grants and contracts from Industry ... about $100 million per year. It is well recognized that contracts with industry can be challenging. Making details of contracts publicly available will threaten our competitive position with universities outside of Pennsylvania, as well as with private universities within PA with whom we compete.[See my last comment.]
• Senate Bill 1 could compromise donor confidentiality. The following information and activities are presently confidential. Exposing these elements and other information of similar content to the public eye would have a chilling effect on donors and would negatively impact our private fundraising productivity: individual donor gift histories; donor gift agreements; the payment vehicles donors use to satisfy their pledges; the assets donors use to satisfy their pledges (i.e. securities, real estate, artwork, etc.); donor research profiles and wealth estimates; donor contact reports, including confidential meetings with a donor's personal legal or financial adviser; expenses associated with donor identification, cultivation, solicitation and stewardship; and minutes of staff and volunteer meetings involving donor strategies.[This is a legitimate concern. I am not certain about Pileggi's legislation, but Mahoney's (D-Fayette County) House bill allows for donor confidentiality while making provisions to avoid conflicts of interest.]
• Senate Bill 1 will create a further erosion in privacy rights of individuals whose personal/confidential information is part of documents falling within the scope of Right-to-Know Act requests.[Again I am not very familiar with Pileggi's bill, but the Mahoney bill address this.]
• Senate Bill 1 could hinder incentive and merit pay programs for faculty. It could allow competing universities to raid the Commonwealth's research institutions.[Translation:we won't be able to underpay certain faculty while overpaying others.]
• Senate Bill 1 will chill certain economic development activities if proprietary/confidential business information is subject to disclosure under the Act.[Back to the business crap again. Who owns this guy? The large number of references to business alone should send up a warning flare that Penn State must be made to open up its books.]
• Senate Bill 1 would require various departments and student organizations to invest enormous resources in researching and copying all kinds of detailed information requested by advocacy groups and protesters intending to deliberately interfere with and halt normal operation of the University. Unreasonable and repetitive requests could paralyze our operation.[Graham put it on the web and let people get it as they need it. It's our information not yours.]
• Making individual salary information public would increase administrative costs, pose a constant detriment to employee morale, severely inhibit the use of merit as a basis for the salary structure and reward system, limit management flexibility, and make the University more vulnerable to increased competition and raiding from other institutions for quality faculty members.[He really is focused on the whole pay thing. This is his second bullet point which discusses it. Maybe he doesn't want anyone to find out his complete compensation package.
  Again, how in the hell does opening up salaries "inhibit the use of merit as a basis for the salary structure"? If the salaries can be justified on the basis of merit making them public shouldn't cause any trouble. On the other hand, if salaries are based on cronyism, then all hell is going to break out. Is that what you are afraid of? The constant detriment stuff is way over blown. I'll admit that initially the morale of some employees will suffer, but in the long run pay will come more into line with performance and moral will rebound. ]
• Speaking of Penn State's competitors, why this bill omits state-aided universities is baffling. It is as if you are determined to put the state-related universities at a competitive disadvantage and reduce us to a lesser and minimally competitive status. Like the University of Pennsylvania, Penn State and Pitt are members of the highly selective Association of American Universities, and are major national research universities. In the latest published National Science Foundation's rankings of research expenditures Penn State ranked ninth in the nation -- Penn was 10th. We compete with Penn, CMU, Cornell and other major national research universities for faculty, public and private research dollars, students and so on.[Graham how does this bill place Penn State at a disadvantage? I can assure you that most people offered faculty positions at Penn State and one of those other schools will take the other school's offer. Penn State despite all the money it gets to do research is, for the most part, an intellectual backwater.And Graham if you weren't so busy kissing corporate ass you may have been able to do something about this. I am starting to think that you're just throwing shit at the wall to what sticks. For example, how does this bill hinder Penn State in the competition for public research money? ]Yet while Penn, Drexel and 24 other institutions collectively receive well over $100 million in nonpreferred appropriations from the General Assembly, they are not included in this bill. Why? [Graham here's a guess. I can divide and that comes out to $3.85 million per school. Penn State in FY 2006-2007 received $328 million from the state which is  a little more than 85 times the average amount those 26 schools received. I'd say that has something to do with it. And Graham ,Mahoney's bill does cover state-aided schools.] I am guessing that someone must have correctly determined that it would put them in a competitive disadvantage, or that their receipt of public funds was a sufficiently small portion of their budget to not make them "public" for purposes of open records. Like these other institutions left out of SB1, Penn State receives a very small portion of its budget from the state -- less than 10 percent -- yet this bill would open up the entire University to open records, regardless of its impact on our ability to compete.[Graham your guess is just way off the mark, and, as is typical for you, rather self-serving. It is certainly about the absolute number. I am sure you realize that for FY 2006-2007 state-related universities received more in state funds than did the state-owned universities and the state-own schools are covered by the current Right-To-Know law. I haven't heard them bellyaching about it. In fact, Penn State alone received nearly as much money as did the state-owned universities.The state budget is here.]

This bill does far more than feed the prurient interests of newspaper editors who are looking for a headline about how much Coach Paterno makes -- as if one could put a dollar value to what he deserves to make based on his contributions to this state since he arrived in Pennsylvania nearly 58 years ago. [The last refuge of a scoundrel:blame the press.]I would point out that no tax dollars support his salary.[I would like to point out that the current lawsuit, now before the state supreme court, to have his salary publicized concerns not the funding source of his salary, but the funding source of his pension. That would come out of the University's operating budget which is supported with state funds. Further the pension is guarrentee by the state. Graham, you don't real reflect well on Penn State when you engage in such sophistry.] As you know, our Board of Trustees has a long-standing policy regarding the privacy of individual salaries. What we are concerned about is the impact that opening up University salaries would have on Penn State's ability to compete in a global marketplace for the best faculty and research scientists[Here's the deal, you rarely hire the best as it is. It's not about the pay. It's about the anti-intellectual climate which you foster.] who we ask to come to Penn State to teach and do critical research that supports the state's economy and quality of life.[Here is an example of that anti-intellectualism. You failed to mention pushing back the frontiers of knowledge which is the primary purpose of university research. For you it's all about helping out your corporate buddies in the name of economic development,i.e. trickle down.] That's what's at stake -- Penn State's ability to teach, do research and serve the Commonwealth and its citizens -- and that's why I wanted to personally attest to the impact of this bill before you.[[Oh my gaud! Open Penn State's budget and we'll all die!]

There are two things that stand out in Graham's testimony. The first is his obsession with making salaries public. My guess is that he and his brain trust have decided that people in general don't think what they make is anybodies business. Hence he is playing on these sympathies. The second thing is that he is more concerned with corporate interests than he is with the interests of the citizens of the Commonwealth. All-in-all he has made a very strong case for the need to open things up at Penn State. That of course is a "unintended negative consequences" for him.

Technorati Tags: Penn State, Spanier, Right-To-Know, Pileggi, sunshine, Pennsylvania

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For the Open Record Redux

State Senator Dominic Peleggi (R-Chester/Deleware) has introduced a bill which will amend the state's open records law. Unlike State Rep. Tim Mahoney's (D-Fayette) bill, it does not start with the asssumption that all records held by a government entity are public records and then carve out exceptions, rather Peleggi's bill specificly defines which records are public. This make the bill significantly weaker than Mahoney's bill. The good news is that like Mahoney's bill it does cover state-related universities.

Technorati Tags: Pennsylvania, Penn State, Sen. Peleggi, open records bill

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For the Open Record

Tim Mahoney's (D-Fayette) open records bill can be found here. And for the record, it covers state-related universities. The definition of agency includes,

State-aided colleges and universities, State-owned colleges and universities, State-related universities and community colleges.

The bill is long. Here is the paragraph which defines a public record. Much of the rest of the bill carves out exception to this rule.

"Public record." All documents, papers, letters, maps, books, tapes, photographs, films, sound recordings, data processing software, database, data or other material, regardless of the physical form, characteristics or means of storage or transmission, made or received in connection with or relating to the work of an agency, except those documents exempt or prohibited from disclosure under Federal or State law. The term does not include those items that are clearly personal in

nature and unrelated to the spending of public funds or the duties imposed upon the agency.

That last sentence seems to open up a huge loophole. Could Penn State argue that this or that didn't use any public funds or that something was not part of its duties as a University-oh, let say running a concert hall or a hotel-and therefore not covered by this bill? Any lawyers out there who want to weigh in on this?

Technorati Tags: Penn State, sunshine, Mahoney, open records law

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It's As If He Was Thinking of Graham

The following commentary by Lawrence Krauss, a physics professor at Case Western Reserve University, is from Marketplace on NPR (H/T UD).

My criticisms of governance at Case Western Reserve University helped spark two non-confidence votes and our president's resignation.



Not only did he not raise enough money, but the funds that were raised were often mismanaged, spent on marketing rather than research and scholarship. Ultimately the reputation of a research university depends on the latter.



But don't get me wrong. I know it's tough these days to run a successful university. It takes money.



Just consider this: To raise $5 billion in five years, for instance, a university president has to raise on average $3 million per day, every day of the year. And a free market means university presidents have to lure tuition-paying students to campus.



So, there's a natural tendency to try and run a university like a business, with marketing, branding, the works.



That means university presidents rub elbows more and more with rich corporate donors, alumni and trustees. They travel in donated corporate jets, and they get paid CEO salaries.



The problem is, universities aren't businesses. The ultimate product and measure of success isn't profit, it's the quality of scholarship.



In fact, research and education don't make money, they cost money. The more successful a research program, the more it costs. The financial investments in all this don't yield short-term fiscal rewards, but long-term ones for society as a whole.



University presidents should be spokespeople for education, intellectual leaders whose vision guides colleagues and students alike — and inspires donors to reach into their pockets, but they must balance the last task carefully.



Presidents disconnect from their shareholders — the faculty — at their own peril. But it's easy to see how this can happen when they spend their days away from their colleagues in a corporate jet at 50,000 feet, traveling at half the speed of sound.

I fully endorse these ideas.



Technorati Tags: Spanier, corporate university, Penn State

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Details, Details, Details!!!

In my post "The Tale of Two Dogs" I noted the distinct styles of UPUA President Jay Chamberlin and UGA President Nick Sathes. When it came to divulging details of the Penn State budget. Jay agreed with Graham that there is no need to change since Penn State is already perfect. He then rolled over onto his back in an attempt to have his stomach scratched by the prexy. Nick simply snarled at Graham that the University's failure to come clean on the budget was costing Penn State support from the state legislature. Clearly, I admire Nick's approach to dealing with Old Main, but I don't agree with either his or Jay's reasoning behind their differing opinions.

First off, Nick said that ,"Legislators have told me it's difficult to allocate more money to Penn State because it's difficult for their constituents to scrutinize the budget." Nick, if that is what you are being told by Legislators then they aren't being straight with you. If the legislators wanted Penn State to completely open their budget, then all they need to do is rewrite the open record laws to cover state-related universities. That is within their power. So Nick the next time someone in Harrisburg tells you that Penn State isn't getting more dough because they don't reveal enough of their budget, ask them why they haven't amended the open record law. As an aside, the legislature has some openness issues of their own to deal with. The latest is the bonus scandal which came to light last week.

Next up is Jay, who seems to think that he already knows enough about the Penn State budget.

Chamberlin agreed, saying the online budget gives a broad impression of the university's finances. "You can get a pretty general idea of what Penn State is spending its money on," he said. Although, he added, "you don't get to see how much a department is spending on pencils."

That comment about pencils was so cute. It gives the impression that people who want to know more about Penn State's budget are only interested in trivial details. Jay, Jay, Jay, haven't you heard that the devil is in the details?

Jay, do you have any idea how much office supplies cost the University? Nope neither do I. What I was able to find out is that in 2001-2002 the University spent 28% of its operating budget on" telecommunications, office supplies, travel expenses, maintenance and equipment." The University operating budget this year is $3.05 billion that means, if we assume that the proportion hasn't changed, that Penn State spent $853 million on these items. Certainly office supplies would not be the largest part of that latter number, but I think that it is fair to say that the amount spent on office supplies would run up into the several million. This is hardly a trivial detail.

Is the University overspending on office supplies? The online budget doesn't give you enough information to answer this question. I was able to find out that Boise Office Solutions has received a competitive contract from the University for office supplies. Generally, competitive bidding is a good way to make sure that one gets the best possible price on something, but this isn't always the case. How many companies bid for the contract and was Boise Office Solutions the lowest bidder? Again, these questions are unanswered in the University budget. The bottomline is you have to trust Old Main that they aren't overspending on office supplies. I frankly don't trust Spanier the bullshit artist.

In my next post I will look at a case where the lack of sunshine in Old Main very likely obscured the co-opting of Cynthia Baldwin the former Chair of the Board of Trustees.

Technorati Tags: sunshine, spanier, budget,

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A Solar Research Resource

A wonderful resource on sunshine laws for all states in the nation is maintained by The Reporters Committee on Freedom of the Press. You can find their discussion of Pennsylvania's laws here.

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A New Open Record Law is Starting to Look as Inevitable as a Sunrise

Today brings news of more support for revising Pennsylvania's open record law.

State House Speaker Dennis M. O'Brien said Wednesday that he'd support changing Pennsylvania's Right-to-Know Law to include the state Legislature.



Speaking to an audience of newspaper publishers, editors and editorial writers, O'Brien also stressed his continuing commitment to changing the way the 203-member House conducts business, and said he hopes a recently convened reform commission will become a permanent fixture in the Capitol.



''I really am committed to changing our ways,'' O'Brien said in a midday speech on the opening day of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association's annual government affairs conference. ''We have to get better at finding common ground.''

There is no word in the article about O'Brien's position on extending the law to state-related universities, but this is still good news. It indicates that there is momentum building up to reform the open record law which would make it hard for Spanier to derail the extension of the law to Penn State.



Let's keep up the pressure on the legislature to pull up the shades on Old Main and let the sunshine in.



Technorati Tags: Penn State, Spanier, sunshine

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The Tale of Two Dogs

The Lap Dog

University Park Undergraduate Association President Jay Chamberlin said he has faith in the [Penn State Board of Trustees]. "I think they're doing a decent job," he said. "That's not saying there's not room for improvement, but for the most part they do a good job being accountable."

[...]

Penn State has been criticized in the past for not fully disclosing its budget, a claim [board secretary] Ammerman disputes. "The budget is an open budget," she said. "It's viewable online."

Chamberlin agreed, saying the online budget gives a broad impression of the university's finances. "You can get a pretty general idea of what Penn State is spending its money on," he said. Although, he added, "you don't get to see how much a department is spending on pencils."

The Bulldog

Nick Stathes, president of the Undergraduate Student Government, painted a different picture. "My experience with the board of trustees was that it seemed as though they didn't ask the right questions to those individuals who presented things to them," he said. "They just accepted things at face value and weren't very interested in learning. Students are losing a lot of the traditional rights that we used to have, and I haven't seen a lot of debate in the board about this."

[...]

Stathes disagreed, [with Ammerman about the openness of the budget], saying the vagueness of Penn State's disclosed budget has held the university back from state appropriations. "Legislators have told me it's difficult to allocate more money to Penn State because it's difficult for their constituents to scrutinize the budge," he said. " [The university] isn't completely open with how it's
spending."

Guess which type of dog Spanier prefers as a pet.

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The GOP Claims to Like a Tan. But They Might Prefer a Fake One from a Bottle.

Mixed news today on the move to bring sunshine to Old Main. First, the good news. The State Senate GOP leader Dominic Pileggi,of Delaware County,has come out in favor of a new open record law and he wants the law to cover Penn State.

Speaking at a Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon in Harrisburg, Pileggi said Senate Republicans plan to introduce legislation within a month that would make several changes to the Right-to-Know Law.

One major change would be exposing legislative spending, which could reach about $341 million this year, to the state's open-records law.

While the House and Senate have released receipts of spending by individual legislators, the chambers are under no legal obligation to do so. Sometimes they restrict documents from being photocopied or take months to fulfill records requests, and little is available on the Internet.

"I'm going to make what I hope will be a compelling argument that there's nothing to hide there and we should make them available," Pileggi told reporters after the event. "I don't know any reason that they couldn't be available."

[...]

Some of the proposed changes Pileggi expects include reducing government response times to requests for records from 10 days to five days and allowing records requests to be submitted by e-mail.

Pileggi, the former Chester mayor who is in his first weeks as the Senate's majority leader, said he also expects the legislation to cover Pennsylvania's four state-related universities -- which include Penn State -- and make it clear that current law applies to the state's student loan agency.

Now here is the bad news.

Pileggi said, however, that he would not favor broadening the definition of a public record, criticized by open-records advocates as too narrow. They also say it puts the onus on the person requesting the record to show that it should be public, rather than forcing the government to prove that it should not be public.

We must work to make sure that a strong open record law is passed. It would be rather meaningless if Penn State is explicitly covered by a law which doesn't assure access to very much.

We won't know for sure where this is going until bills are actually introduced in the Assembly and Senate. I'll let you know when that happens.

Technorati Tags: Sunshine, Spanier, GOP, Mahoney
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A Closer Look at the Numbers

My last post concerning the way in which the University tried to hide the amount of its debt service in the 2006-2007 University budget very likely was wrong. I couldn't find a line item for debt service in the budget and deduced that an item labeled capitol improvement was in fact debt service. It is possible that the purpose of this cryptically name line item was to give the impression of a much lower debt load than is in fact the case.



Today I found a report, issued in August of 2006, on Virginia Tech's debt policy which uses the debt policy of several universities, including Penn State, to assess its own policy. This report contains informations from Moody's bond rating service which combined with other information allowed me estimate the debt service.



Penn State's total debt, at the time the report was issued, was $849 million. The ratio of debt service to operation costs is 0.027. The total budget for 2006-2007 (Erickson's report to the Penn State Faculty Senate, p. 21 of the pdf file.) is $3.2 billion. If one assumes that that total budget and operating costs are the same (Since the budget is balanced, this is not unreasonable to assume.) then debt service would be $86.4 million and not the paltry $3.65 million which I guessed at yesterday. Total student enrollment for the 2006-2007 academic year, according to the Collegian, is 83,721. Therefore the amount of debt per student is $10,141. The debt service per student is $1032 based on total operating costs. If you exclude Hershey and Penn College the numbers are more than halved, but still substantially more than yesterday's guess. The debt service per student in this case drops to $442. This later number does not leave out the students from Hershey and Penn College in the total number of students. If those students are dropped, then that number would increase. Either way, $1032 or $442, it is a substantial contribution to tuition.

The state also incurs debt on behalf of the University for capitol improvements, which are payed-off with tax dollars. These numbers are not included in the report.

Let me set aside the size of that numbers for a moment and return to the original point of my post yesterday. The University does not make these numbers readily available. I had to spend the better part of today looking for the information which I needed to estimate the debt service per student and I was lucky to find the Virginia Tech report. Without that report I wouldn't have been able to do the calculations.

I believe that the budget information that the University places online is designed to give the appearance of openness while, in fact, obscuring the situation as much as possible. We need more sunshine. The University should be required to put a detailed budget online in an easily searchable format. Work to get the Mahoney open record law passed.

Technorati Tags: tuition, Spanier, debt, sunshine, Mahoney, spin

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Debt Service by Any Other Name

I was perusing the University budget to try to answer the questions in my last post about the $170 million that the University recently borrowed. I didn't find answers to those questions, but I did find, rather oddly, that there is no line item for debt service in the budget. You can find one for Penn College which is a self contained subsidiary of the University, but not one for the University itself. However, there is this rather confusing bit.

Insufficient or inadequate space continues to be a serious impediment to Penn State's academic programs. The University lags behind its peers in providing modern laboratory and classroom space for its students, faculty, and staff. Even with the new facilities constructed over the last several years, Penn State still has among the lowest overall space per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student of any public university in the Big 10. While capital funds received from the Commonwealth are greatly appreciated, they will not be sufficient to meet the University's most critical needs. As a result, the University established an ongoing general funds budget to support the capital improvement program. These funds enable the University to incur debt for building renovations and construction, and to provide for the operating costs of the buildings once they are completed. A total of $3,650,000 is included in the budget for 2006-07.

It sounds to me like the $3.65 million in the 2006-2007 budget is for paying back borrowed money. The fact that it is buried at the end of rather defensively written paragraph certainly suggests that the "capitol improvement" line item is debt service renamed.

Can anyone doubt that these guys are full of shit. We need Tim Mahoney's new open records law and fast!

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Mahon Praises Spanier's Tan While Reaching for More Sunscreen.

This is an update of my previous post concerning Democratic State Representative Tim Mahoney's proposed open record law. The Collegian picked the story up this morning and moves the ball forward with interviews of Representative Mahoney, Penn State flack Bill Mahon, and State Representative Kerry Benninghoff. I think the article deserves some analysis.

I said in my earlier post Spanier will oppose the language in the bill which explicitly expands coverage of the open record law to Penn State, but Mahon didn't come out against the bill or the proposed language.

Bill Mahon, Penn State spokesman, said he has no problems with the proposed legislation.

"There are a number of newspapers over the years who have demanded Penn State make budget information available. This usually comes from newspapers who haven't checked our Web site," he said. "You can literally find hundreds and hundreds of pages of budget information."

Note the hostile tone. According to Mahon newspapers didn't request or ask for budget information, they "demanded budget information". His next statement is designed to give the impression that Penn State already makes the requested information available, therefore the papers were somehow being unreasonable. But the online budget is not a line item budget. So if you want to know how much Penn State spends on feeding Trustees at their bi-monthly meetings you won't find it on Penn State's Web site or anywhere else. (To learn more about Penn State's use of suncreen, I highly recommend a series of entertaining and informative columns written by Collegian columnist Renée Petrina back in 2004. You can find them here, here, here,here and here.)

Mahoney isn't buying Penn State's talking point, he said "that under his bill, institutions would have to further break down the budget information they currently make available to account for spending within certain categories."

Before anyone concludes from Mahon's remarks that I was wrong about Spanier opposing the language in the bill which would explicitly extend the open record law to Penn State, remember that we are early in the game. Mahon's position as expressed in today's Collegian is Penn State's opening gambit. There is no need for them to oppose a bill which has not even been introduced on the floor of the house. To do so would give the impression that they have something to hide, which, in turn, would would give further impetus for the language. While they take a "what me worry" public position on the bill, you can be sure they are working behind the scenes to kill the bill before it comes to the floor. Their go-to-guy on this is Kerry Benninghoff who has reassuring words for them.

State Rep. Kerry Benninghoff, R-Bellefonte, said, in general, he supports open records, but Mahoney's bill has a long way to go before it can be passed.

"It needs to be narrowed," Benninghoff said. "If it's too broadly written, it will die under its own weight. Then, there will probably be several public hearings at which time I believe the universities will have a word on it. It could include stuff the university doesn't want out there."

"It needs to be narrowed," should be read don't worry Graham I've got your back. Benninghoff is carrying water for Spanier, who will remain above the fray and keep what is left of his pristine image as a good guy. Oh and by the way, bills don't die of their own weight. Bills are killed by legislators. I am looking at you Kerry.

For those of you who despair that Penn State will succeed in squashing this bill before it has a chance to see the light of day, there is some good news today as well. According to the CDT Ed Rendell plans for his upcoming term includes a surprise.

[Rendell] broke new ground with his promise to overhaul the state's open-records law, which many right-to-know advocates regard as archaic because it limits public access to specific categories of records rather than opening all records to public scrutiny except for specific ones.

The fight is on to bring sunshine to Old Main. Contact your State Representative and Governor Rendell in support of Mahoney's bill and be sure to tell him/her that Penn State and other state-related universities must be covered by the bill.

Technorati Tags: Penn State, Sunshine, Mahoney, Spanier, spin
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