passopenrecords.org

It’s traditional, right? But let’s do this passopenrecords.org-style!

Rather than Friday-morning quarterbacking, I thought I’d do a Friday roundup of the articles on the JoePa salary ruling.

Here’s the story in a nutshell: It all started five years ago when reporter Jan Murphy and the Harrisburg Patriot-News asked Penn State for the salaries of JoePa and a three other top administrators. Penn State said it was private information, and Commonwealth Court ruled the information was public in 2005. Penn State appealed, and the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the information was, in fact, public record.

The ruling, the Philadelphia Inquirer notes, says that “Enrolling in the system makes each a ’state employee’ under state law.” Joe Paterno participates in the State Employees Retirement System. And guess what? In May, Paterno said he doesn’t care if the information is public.

Jan Murphy reported on the court’s decisionwith some interesting quotes from the ruling:

The Supreme Court stated, “Individuals and private entities cannot reasonably expect the commonwealth to keep secrets from its citizens regarding the disbursement of public funds, past, present or future.

“The minute any individual or entity voluntarily submits any information to the commonwealth for the purpose of deriving a financial benefit …, that information ceases to be private.”

Penn State has 14 days to ask the court to reconsider their decision, but does not plan to appeal, according to the Patriot-News.

There are a lot of people out there - Penn State fans or not - who are wondering why anyone cares. This isn’t just about Joe Paterno. This is about an institution that receives state funding arguing they should be exempt from the rules that apply to other state-funded universities. It’s about an open records law that hasn’t been overhauled in 50 years. It’s bigger than Penn State, and it’s bigger than Joe Paterno - which, if you have ever spent any time in our fair Commonwealth, is pretty big.

The Morning Call’s editorial on Wednesday said that “Part of the problem is that the current Right-to-Know Act doesn’t cover Pennsylvania’s state-related universities, including Penn State, which gets about 10 percent of its $3 billion budget from tax dollars. However, its employees participate in SERS, which is a fully public system.”

As one blogger has noted, it’s great timing for a ruling like this from the state Supreme Court.

In an online poll by the Centre Daily Times , located in State College, respondents said that they agreed with the Supreme Court Ruling, 56% to 39%. The other 5% weren’t sure. CDT editor Bob Heisse, a former employee of the Patriot, congratulates his former employer on their win, and wrote in his blog that “Penn State President Graham Spanier maintains that 99 percent of Penn State is indeed public, so this must qualify in that 1 percent bracket.”

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette notes that last year, the University of Pittsburgh - also a state-affiliated university - revealed the salaries of their football and basketball coaches - and they were the second- and third- highest paid employees at that University. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review also covered the story.