Disclosure forms from two trustees won’t be made public

Last week, a Penn State attorney provided additional details about how it intends to make trustee conflict of interest disclosure forms available to the public. As I suspected, it won’t be as simple as putting them on a web site.

The forms “will be available upon written request and during normal business hours,” wrote Penn State attorney Katherine Allen in an e-mail last week. The new policy will take effect “on or before March 17” she wrote, and according to a previous filing with the Office of Open Records, only forms submitted by “current” trustees will be released.

The timing of their release is suspicious because tomorrow the Pa. Senate is expected to confirm replacements for two trustees – Ira Lubert and Al Clemens.

Since administrators haven’t announced the exact day the forms will be available to the public, it’s impossible to say whether we’ll get a chance to peek at Lubert’s and Clemen’s disclosure forms. But I’ll go out on a limb and say it’s likely this new policy will start immediately following tomorrow’s confirmation hearing.

Be sure to bring some pocket change when you mosey on over the Old Main to take a look at what’s on these forms. Allen wrote: “A charge of $0.15/page will be applied for self-copying and $0.50/page for staff-assisted copying. There is no charge for self-service scanning.”