By Peter L. DeCoursey
Bureau Chief
Capitolwire
HARRISBURG (Feb. 28) – The release by Penn State officials of the Freeh Report on the Penn State/Sandusky scandal without reviewing it or subsequently defending it hurt the university and led to serious negative consequences, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Jake Corman, R-Centre, told university president Rodney Erickson today.
Corman’s comments came as Penn State, Pitt, Temple and Lincoln universities appeared before the appropriations panel for their budget hearing.
With law enforcement officials and investigators continuing to question the assertions made by Freeh in a report that accused former top Penn State officials of conspiring to conceal child sexual abuse, Corman said the Freeh report led the NCAA to “pounce” on the university, and challenged Erickson to defend the Freeh Report against its factual critics, including former Gov. and U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh.
Erickson said since parts of the report concerned allegations of crimes – and trials on some of those charges now await former Penn State President Graham Spanier and others – it was not appropriate to discuss the report’s contents.
“I guess I wish we would have taken that position” before releasing the unread, unreviewed report in July, when several of those legal proceedings were already underway, Corman said. He said he understood why the university wanted a factual report by Freeh or someone, and that the university had been repeatedly told it had to be an independent report, and made public at the same time the board got it.
But while that may have been the course critics urged on the board, Corman said, it has not worked out well. The report strengthened critics attacking the university, including in unfair ways, Corman asserted, but was released without any review by the university to ensure it was accurate.
But Corman said the Freeh Report helped create the atmosphere in which the NCAA rushed to judgment, again, without verifying the report’s allegations or facts, and slam the institution with a $60 million unprecedented fine.Corman authored and passed a bill that the governor recently signed into law, ensuring the entire fine stayed in the state, and the NCAA counter-sued to negate the law. Corman also supported a Corbett lawsuit to reduce the NCAA sanctions that included a five-year bowl ban as well as the fine. The NCAA has asked a federal court to toss the Corbett lawsuit.So Penn State should either have decided there was enough factual support for the Freeh Report to release it, or should defend it factually now, since it spent $6 million on it, Corman said.
Erickson sat quietly during Corman’s almost six-minutes on this topic, speaking only to decline to defend the report due to legal proceedings. Corman was careful to say it was nothing personal, prefacing his criticism of the handling of the Freeh Report with lengthy praise for Erickson working hard to steer the university through a difficult crisis when he could have retired instead.
So Erickson began his comment of not responding by thanking Corman for the compliments.
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NEWSLANC EDITOR: Governor Tom Corbett bragged about having recommended that Freeh be engaged to make an investigation.
