Penn State remains largely exempt from PA\u2019s open records law. Should that change?<\/a><\/p>\nHere are key takeaways:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Penn State, Pitt, Temple and Lincoln are classified as \u201cstate-related institutions\u201d and are not fully covered by the Right to Know Law. Schools in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, like Slippery Rock or Kutztown, are fully subject to it.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contracts, bids, financial reports and other documents that are publicly accessible at most Pennsylvania universities are largely inaccessible at Penn State. A 2023 amendment expanded access to some financial records, but advocates say gaps remain wide.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Nearly every other state university system in the country requires compliance with public records law, according to Amy Kristin Sanders, the John and Ann Curley chair in First Amendment studies at Penn State. Delaware is the only other exception.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The Centre Daily Times contacted every state legislator representing Centre County. Only Reps. Scott Conklin and Paul Takac responded. Conklin supports making state-related universities subject to the law. Takac stressed transparency but did not directly say he\u2019d support a legislative change.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Penn State said the current law \u201cstrikes an appropriate balance\u201d between keeping proprietary information confidential and the public\u2019s right to understand how tax dollars are spent.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The exemption has real-world consequences: when Penn State announced campus closures and when a new building closed due to a \u201cstructural issue,\u201d the public had no legal right under the RTKL to obtain detailed information about those decisions or their costs.<\/p>\n
The summary points above were compiled with the help of AI tools and edited by journalists. The full story in the link at top was reported, written and edited entirely by journalists.<\/p>\n
Related Stories from Centre Daily Times<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania\u2019s Right to Know Law guarantees public access to government information, but Penn State and three other \u201cstate-related\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[21087,68737,28,30,29,68740,68738,68739],"class_list":["post-150880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-centre-county","tag-penn-state-open-records","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-pennsylvania-transparency","tag-right-to-know-law","tag-state-related-universities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}