STATE COLLEGE, Pa.--The Penn State Board of Trustees, still sanctimonious in its public moral outrage, continues to violate state law.
The Board held a private three hour meeting, Wednesday evening [July 25] to discuss the NCAA sanctions and the role university president Dr. Rodney Erickson played in accepting the sanctions.
Erickson, according to the Centre Daily Times, had "accepted the sanctions after discussing them with advisors and some trustees, but not the entire board."
The Pennsylvania Sunshine Act, which covers Penn State, requires that public agencies "shall give public notice of its first regular meeting of each calendar or fiscal year not less than three days in advance of the meeting and shall give public notice of the schedule of its remaining regular meetings." For special meetings, the Sunshine Act requires an agency to give public notice at least 24 hours in advance. The law doesn't require a public notice if an emergency meeting is declared, but there was no indication that anything the Board conducted in secret was an emergency, as defined under the Act. The Board gave no indication that the meeting was an executive session to discuss personnel issues or pending lawsuits.
The law also requires that, "Official action and deliberations by a quorum of the members of an agency shall take place at a meeting open to the public." None of the few exceptions permitted in state law seems to apply to the reason for the latest meeting.
Following the meeting, the Board issued a PR-soaked statement that the meeting was for a "discussion," and that there was no vote. Apparently, the Board believes that "discussions" without a vote aren't covered by the Sunshine Act, so it was free to hold yet another unpublicized secret meeting. The Board, as has been so often the case, was wrong.
The Sunshine Act defines a meeting as "Any prearranged gathering of an agency which is attended or participated in by a quorum of the members of an agency held for the purpose of deliberating agency business or taking official action." Discussions or the lack of a vote are not reasons for exemption. According to local media, at least 15 members of the 32-member board were in attendance at that meeting, with an unknown number possibly connected by telephone communications. A quorum is 13 members.
The Board, in the week prior to firing Coach Joe Paterno and President Graham Spanier in November, had conducted at least two illegal meetings and, in violation of its own rules and state requirements, failed to give Paterno or Spanier due process in their abrupt termination.
The pattern of the Board's haughty disregard of state law and failure to provide transparency didn't begin with the disclosure of Jerry Sandusky's actions on the university campus, but has been obvious to even the most casual observer for years.
On the day after the Board held its latest meeting, Auditor General Jack Wagner, who had been conducting an independent investigation, called a news conference to announce that "the culture at the highest level of this university must change." Wagner, calling for better "transparency and accountability," charged that the Board and administration "operate[s] in an isolated fashion without any public scrutiny on certain very important decisions impacting the university." The Board, said Wagner "cannot operate in secrecy."
He also recommended that Penn State and the three other state-related universities (University of Pittsburgh, and Lincoln and Temple universities), all of which take state funds, be fully subjected to the state's Right-to-Know Law. The state's 14 state-owned universities are already covered by the Right-to-Know Law. (Penn State receives $300--400 million a year.)
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
