OPINION

LANCASTER NEW ERA Editorial

State Sen. Lloyd Smucker is making headway in his efforts toward a more transparent and accountable state government.

Smucker, a West Lampeter Township Republican, is chairman of the Senate State Government Committee.

His committee recently approved legislation that would strengthen the state’s Right to Know Law as it pertains to Penn State and the three other “state-related” universities in Pennsylvania.

Existing law requires little of Penn State and the other three, beyond their federal 990 form and an annual list of the 25 highest-paid employees.

This is so, despite the fact that these universities receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money each year.

Meanwhile, the 14 universities that fall under the umbrella of the State System of Higher Education, including Millersville, are entirely subject to the state’s Right to Know Law.

The proposal from Smucker’s committee would require Penn State, Temple, Pittsburgh and Lincoln universities to create searchable and downloadable databases on their public websites. Such databases would include budget, revenue and expenditure records, among other information.

Also, Penn State and the others would be required to post information on contracts valued at $5,000 or more on the state’s online contract database.

Penn State and the others were able to skirt the Right to Know Law, largely because of the lobbying efforts of former PSU President Graham Spanier.

Spanier maintained that, among other things, making public such data would damage state-related universities’ intellectual property rights and compromise donor confidentiality.

Spanier seems so much less persuasive now that he has been implicated in a cover-up connected to the Jerry Sandusky mess.

The legislation approved by Smucker’s committee requires no more of Penn State and the other three than it does of the taxpayer-supported universities in the state system.

The measure deserves swift approval by the state Legislature and governor’s office.