The 2010 Penn State Stairs Report

Every February the General Assmebly publishes financial data for the four state-related universities, known  as a Stairs Report,  in a PDF format. I have been converting the data for Penn State to Google Docs spreadsheet format in order to facilatate the analysis of the data and posting the links over to the right. Typically, I do this within a week of the publication of the data. This year I was slow off the mark.  It's finally up today. 

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Penn State Legal Expenses 2007-2008: Loose Knots on Some Loose Ends

I wanted to tie up a couple of loose ends from my earlier post on Penn State legal expenses.  There were several entities which received payment from Penn State which I thought likely were settlements for lawsuits.  I haven't documented any legal proceedings which may have resulted in those payments, but I've got some idea of what's going on two of the payments. One was a payment to Rad Technology LLC in the amount of $281,000 and the other was a payment to PSRP Developers in the amount of $11,873. Both are likely the result of some sort of contract dispute.

Rad Techonology built a radiation treatment vault for Hershey Medical Center (scroll down) and for which it was payed $2,091,439 in 2005-2006. Last year's legal payment very likely was tied to this.

PSRP Developers built and manages a building at Penn State's Inovation Park. It has received regular payments from the University for several years. (Go take a look a the Stairs Reports over to your right.) It is likely that the legal payment for 2007-2008  was tied to a lease or property dispute of some sort.

As always, if you have more detailed information about thses matters leave it in comments or email me.

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Penn State Legal Expenses 2007-2008

When I discovered the Stairs Reports a few years ago, the first thing that came to my mind was that I could get an upper bound on the amount Penn State spent on legal settlements by subtracting the amount paid to McQuaide-Blasko, the University's General Counsel, from total legal expenses. How tight those bounds are is anybody's guess. But with the release of Penn State's 2007-2008 Financial Report by the Pennsylvania Department of Education, we see explicitly what lawsuits cost the University that fiscal year.

Here a table of Penn State legal expenses derived from the Financial Report.

Penn State Legal Expenses 2007-2008

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Law Research legal expenses fisca Penn State

Most of payments are to law firms, but a few non-law firm payments stand out. There is the payment of $400,000 to John R. Hancock which is almost certainly part or all of a settlement to a 2005 Federal Civil Rights/Employment lawsuit which he filed against the University.

Another payment which got my attention is the $281,000 payment to Rad Technology LLC. I haven't found any information on a lawsuit that this company may have filed, but I haven't tried that hard. It's fair bet that this is a settlement to a lawsuit and it is also a fair bet that the $44,915 paid to McQuaide-Blasko by the Office of Physical Plant was for defending that suit.

Anyway, I will leave it to my readers to dig a little deeper on Rad Technology, PSRP Developers, Randy Tice, and the others that have received payments which may be the result of lawsuits. You can leave what you find in comments or you can email me your findings.

Have fun.

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Fun Facts

Here are a few fun facts gleaned from Penn State's 2007-2008 financial report:

• The amount Intercollegiate Athletics spent on portable toilets:$164,778 (Vol. III pg. 656);
• The amount Information Technology Services spent on Angel course management software:$35,954 (Vol III pg. 317);
• The amount that General & Academic Administration, i.e. Old Main, spent on movies:$2,596 (Vol. III pg. 636).

I'm not sure what the movie thing is about, but maybe since Graham publishes his movie reviews each year on the Penn State propaganda portal, he's able to get Penn State pay his rental fees.

Technorati Tags: Penn State financial disclosure, Penn State, humor

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If You Feed the Watchdog, Will It Keep Quiet?

Every year since 1996 the Pennsylvania General Assembly has issued financial reports on the state-related universities called Stairs Reports (Take a look over to your right). For even longer, the General Assembly has also issued reports on credit hours, teaching loads, etc... for both the state-owned and state-related universities. These are called Snyder Reports. This year, for the first time,  the Pennsylvania Department of Education has posted  on their Web site, without any fanfare, the raw data submitted by the state-related universities to the General Assembly which form the basis of these reports.

As you might imagine there is substantially more information in the raw data. For example, one important difference is that the  the raw data  lists the names of all entities which have received  contracts for goods and service in excess of $1000, while the Stairs Reports only provides the names of those that have received contracts in excess of $750,000.The raw data, unlike the Stairs Reports,  also has the budget category for the contract.

This raw data is a potential goldmine.

As a test, I decided to look at how much money the Centre Daily Times was paid by Penn State in 2007-2008. The results are shown in the embedded table.
Payment to Centre Daily Times by Penn State 2007-2008

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Other Research stairs report centre daily times

The total amount, $346,627, is a very large amount, but its not large enough to make the cutoff for inclusion in the Stairs Report. Its size does raise the question of whether, or to what extent, these payment have compromised the Centre Daily Times role as a watchdog over Penn State. This question is particularly of interest now that the CDT is experiencing financial difficulties.


Technorati Tags: Penn State, Centre Daily Times, Penn State financial disclosure, conflict of interest

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