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Leaders at Pennsylvania State University may have violated the state’s open meetings law by gathering in private, according to Spotlight PA.
The executive committee of the university’s Board of Trustees has been meeting privately for over a decade, using a provision in the Pennsylvania Sunshine Act that allows public agencies to hold closed “conferences” for a limited number of purposes, such as completing a training.
The director of Penn State’s Office of the Board of Trustees, Shannon Harvey, told Spotlight PA the meetings were used to “review Board and committee agendas and for planning purposes” and said that she believes the conferences “comply with the law and facilitate good governance.” She did not explain how the committee determined that its meetings qualified as conferences, nor why it chose to conduct them in private.
Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel with the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, argued that the university’s explanation was “inconsistent with the law” and that if the committee is advising the larger board, it is required to follow the Sunshine Act.
