COLLEGIAN STAFF WRITER |
The salaries of Joe Paterno and other university administrators will be released to the public in no more than eight days, per a Tuesday ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
In the 4-2 ruling, the court decided that any request for the salaries of Penn State's 6,252 full-time employees enrolled in the State Employees' Retirement System (SERS) must be granted unless disclosure is "intrinsically harmful" to individual privacy, according to court documents.
Although the university has eight more days to appeal, Penn State officials said they do not plan to fight the decision. If no appeal is filed, the salaries must be released by next Tuesday.
The five-year lawsuit originated from a complaint filed by reporter Jan Murphy and The Patriot-News Company in 2002 to make public the salaries of Paterno, vice president and provost Rodney Erickson, vice president and treasurer Gary Schultz and former budget officer Richard Althouse.
After the Commonwealth Court ruled in favor of The Patriot-News in 2005, the retirement board agreed to release the information, but the university appealed, sending the case to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
Justice Cynthia Baldwin, a Penn State trustee, abstained from the case.
"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," wrote Justice James Fitzgerald III for the majority.
Because 36 percent of Penn State's full-time employees receive state pensions from SERS, their privately funded salaries are public under Pennsylvania's Right to Know Act, which grants public access to government records. Though Penn State is "state-related," receiving 10 percent of its budget from state appropriations, not all university information is subject to the act.
Penn State officials said they did not want the information released, deeming the salaries private information.
"This wasn't about Joe Paterno's salary. It was as much about the salary of the landscape crew, the English faculty, the dining workers," said Bill Mahon, a Penn State spokesman. "It's about 6,000 employees, many who were hired at a time when salaries were private and not something to be published in the news media."
He added that releasing this information could hinder Penn State's ability to attract and retain high quality faculty.
"When headhunters and others can have access to personal salaries, it will be relatively easy for other institutions to pick off our employees," he said. "We lose faculty every year to other institutions."
Craig Staudenmaier, The Patriot-News' attorney, said the ruling is a "victory for the people of Pennsylvania and the ability to see how their tax dollars are spent."
He added that it should set a precedent for future cases.
"Hopefully, no one else will have to wait five years to get information," he said.
Paterno's son Jay said the head coach "hasn't really spent any time worrying" about the decision and is letting the university handle the case.
"I don't know how he'll react. I can't really tell," Jay Paterno said last week, adding that his father "has said publicly before he doesn't care if they make it public or not."
Penn State's lawyer, John Snyder, of the McQuaide Blasko law firm, was not available for comment.
Jeff Nelson, an athletic department spokesman, released a statement that said Joe Paterno and the athletic department would not comment on the decision.
