Penn State board does Sunshine Act 'cure'

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Three weeks ago, Pennsylvania State University's board of trustees met hurriedly to fire longtime football coach Joe Paterno, accept president Graham B. Spanier's resignation, and name provost Rodney Erickson as the university's new president.

But questions arose about whether the board had complied with the state's Sunshine Act, because there was no evidence of required public votes on the matters. So the executive committee - nine of the 32 board members - decided to hold a brief telephone conference call Friday morning to resolve questions and formally approve those three major decisions.

The changes in status for Spanier, Paterno, and Erickson were the result of the questionable handling of child-sexual-abuse allegations against former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, whose arrest came five days before the departures of Paterno and Spanier.

Both men had faced growing criticism over the university's failure to report to law enforcement authorities allegations that Sandusky sexually assaulted a boy in a locker-room shower of the Lasch football building on campus in 2002.

"Due to the extraordinary circumstances" during the week of Nov. 6, Penn State spokesman Bill Mahon said after the executive committee's five-minute phone call, "the board of trustees needed to act swiftly and decisively regarding personnel. While the board believes immediate action was necessary [three weeks ago], it is holding this special, preannounced public meeting of the executive committee to reaffirm and ratify the board's prior personnel decisions."

He added that the trustees "wanted to dot all the I's and cross all the T's."

He said the firing, the resignation, and the naming of the new president were effective the week of Nov. 6. The full board will meet in January to "reaffirm" the action taken by the executive committee Friday, he added.

Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, said later Friday that the Penn State trustees "took advantage of a court-made remedy known as a 'cure.' "

Agencies subject to the Sunshine Act, Melewsky said, "can remedy an alleged violation of the act if they redo the suspect action at a properly advertised public meeting. It's a 'do-over.' It's not an unusual thing for an agency to do when there is an allegation of Sunshine Act problems. Courts have allowed agencies to participate via conference call."