HARRISBURG - The Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal has demonstrated the need for major reforms in the way Penn State University is run, outgoing state Auditor General Jack Wagner said Wednesday.
"The university is not accountable to the taxpayers who support it," said Mr. Wagner as he unveiled a final report making recommendations for diluting the powers of the office of university president, changing the operations of the university board of trustees and reducing its size from 32 to 21 voting members.
Key recommendations include stripping the university president of his seat on the trustees board and numerous committees and making the governor a non-voting board member instead of a voting member. Mr. Wagner said it's time to bring Penn State under the state Right to Know and ethics laws. He floated some of these ideas last July in a preliminary report about Penn State's governing structure.
Saying the Penn State trustee board has taken few substantive reform steps since the Sandusky scandal broke a year ago, Mr. Wagner said it will be up to state lawmakers and Gov. Tom Corbett in the next legislative session to take charge of the reform effort.
Mr. Corbett has already called for including Penn State under the Right to Know law and said the trustee board is too large, said spokesman Kevin Harley. He said the trustee board is pursuing reforms based on recommendations in a report issued last July by former FBI director Louis Freeh.
Mr. Wagner's term as auditor general ends Jan. 15. He will be succeeded by Democratic Rep. Eugene DePasquale of York who was elected Nov. 6.
Mr. Wagner urged Penn State not to hire a new permanent president until necessary reforms are implemented. Rodney Erickson has been serving as interim Penn State president for a year now. Former president Graham Spanier and former university officials Gary Schultz and Timothy Curley face a preliminary hearing Dec. 13 in Harrisburg on charges relating to their alleged concealment of information about suspected child abuse involving Mr. Sandusky, including three on-campus incidents between 1999 and 2001. Mr. Sandusky is serving a 30-to-60 year sentence on a child sex abuse conviction at the state Correctional Institution at Greene in Waynesburg.
The proposed reforms won't stop the breakdowns in human character that led to the Penn State scandal, but, if implemented, they would reduce the potential for any future breakdowns to go undetected, Mr. Wagner said.
Part of the problem is that Penn State's charter and enabling law are antiquated and date to 1855, when the university was founded, Mr. Wagner said.
He said the president shouldn't have multiple roles as top administrator, voting member on the trustee board and board secretary because it concentrates too much power in one person.
Having the governor as a voting trustee creates conflict-of-interest questions because of the latter's authority over state budget decisions, Mr. Wagner said.
Contact the writer: rswift@timesshamrock.com