And finally, our anchor man…Edward Hintz. The back of Ed Hintz’s bubble gum card is perhaps the most crowded of any of the trustees. Hintz was elected to the board in 1994 as a business and industry trustee, serving until 2015. He was the chair from 2001 to 2003, and served on the executive committee for much/most of his time on the board. He has also served on boards for The Hershey Medical Center and the Corporation for Penn State, and on the 1995 and 2013 presidential search committees. All plum positions. The initial focus of this piece will be on his 2001-2003 term as board chair. Here, former Penn State trustee Bob Horst describes the co-opting of the six business and industry board seats in 2002:
“In 2002, then board chairman Edward Hintz, Jr. (an industrial trustee) appointed a committee to study and recommend changes to the process for electing industrial trustees. The outcome of the study was a name change to ‘business and industry’ trustees, and the election was eliminated. Not surprisingly, some are the largest financial contributors reported by the university. As Horst noted, the ‘stealth maneuver’ would henceforth eliminate outside elections altogether and move control to the business and industry trustees themselves, as they would control three of the five positions on the selection committee. Thus, not only would a small ‘power’ group of trustees control governance of the university, effectively there would be no way to remove or replace them.” (pennlive.com, updated 12/8/11)
Ray Blehar has said, “The so-called 33rd Trustee was Frederick Anton of the Pennsylvania Manufacturer's Association (PMA). PMA rigged the BOT mechanical and engineering elections for decades -- up until the point the Hintz and [now emeritus trustee Edward “Ted”] Junker revised the charter and came up with the insular selection process for the newly named Business and Industry Trustees.”
In an earlier installment, we learned that the six Ag society seats might have been fixed for years. For certain, the corruption in the B&I process has become institutionalized. In both cases, parties outside of the university have been involved in the hostile takeovers. You think the PMA/B&I group hijacked those positions so Karen Peetz could one day run the show, or that the Ag Societies commandeered theirs out of everlasting reverence for Keith Masser? At the top…who really controls these 12 positions?
The Ag seats are said to funnel up through Pennsylvania Farm Bureau and its former president and former PSU trustee Keith Eckel. Beyond the Penn State board, Eckel is connected to Corbett through service on his chosen gubernatorial transition team. Both bear the same “appearance of impropriety” outlined in our examination of Corbett. These six seats certainly appear to be under the control of the type of “network” we discussed in the last installment.
If possible, B&I connections are even more troubling. On paper, the Penn State board has been tied most strongly to The Second Mile…for many years…through the Business and Industry trustees, the group that has effectively seized control of the university. Long-time B&I trustee Lloyd Huck was a major ($23,000+, with further estate provisions) contributor to TSM, and his wife Dottie served on TSM’s board); William Schreyer’s daughter DrueAnne served on TSM’s board; L. J. Rowell, Jr. served on both Penn State and TSM boards, and was a TSM contributor; Ted Junker, involved in the 2002 B&I coup, and Quentin Wood were four-figure contributors, as were 11/5/11 trustees Linda Strumpf and James Broadhurst. In addition to his $12,000+ contribution to TSM, Ken Frazier shepherded the Freeh fraud, and…did there seem to you to be an air of desperation in his desire to “move on”? Though Ira Lubert, whose ties to TSM have been well-documented, was a governor-appointed trustee at 11/5/11, he’s now been adopted by the B&I group. This is just what we know at a glance. The control of these six seats, and indeed, the university, was gained and has been maintained dishonestly. The group responsible for that would appear to be heavily invested in the protection of The Second Mile, in need of that protection, or both. (Not a single 11/5/11 Ag trustee appeared on TSM’s donor list between 2005 and 2010. Of the 11/5/11 governor-appointed trustees, only Paul Silvis did. Lubert was a board member.)
If we consider the protection of The Second Mile to be within the scope of these outside parties, and that a trustee owes an allegiance to his/her sponsor, a picture comes into focus. Constructing a “path of influence” from the 32 11/5/11 trustees upward:
CORBETT – directly connected to the NETWORK.
GREIG, TOMALIS, ALLAN – connected to the NETWORK as appointees of Corbett.
KHOURY – connected to NETWORK as appointee of Corbett.
CLEMENS, DAMBLY, SILVIS, DI BERARDINIS – appointed to at least one term by Rendell, subject to future confirmation by Corbett; thus connected to NETWORK.
LUBERT – connected to NETWORK several ways: appointment by Rendell; connection to Rendell through casino licensing; direct close connections to The Second Mile; now a B&I trustee.
JOYNER – connected upward through Lubert to NETWORK; Lubert surrogate.
GARBAN – connected to NETWORK through TSM tie (son Drew, long-time TSM director).
ECKEL, HAYES, HETHERINGTON, MASSER, SHAFFER, HUBER – connected to NETWORK through corrupt election process controlled by Eckel/PFB; Eckel connection to Corbett, and “appearance of impropriety.”
BROADHURST, FRAZIER, HINTZ, PEETZ, STRUMPF, SURMA connected to NETWORK through B&I group’s close connections to TSM; with Frazier and Surma, both former board chairs having close personal connections to TSM.
That’s 24 of the 32 November 5, 2011 voting trustees who can plausibly be tied to such influence, directly or indirectly. I’ve asked myself “Why would every one of those trustees care so much about protecting The Second Mile, no matter what it costs the university? Why did PSU join the Corman lawsuit…on the NCAA’s side…against its own best interest? They can’t all be “bad guys,” can they? Aren’t there any honest trustees who would vote to do the ‘right’ thing, and if others hang…so be it? Why does my belly button look like this?”(Good research knows no bounds.) It just didn’t make sense. How do 32 trustees independently, and often uninformed, consistently make one baffling, terrible decision after another? But when I viewed it another way, it made perfect sense: What if they are not in their seats to serve Penn State? What if they are agents of their sponsors? At least a circumstantial case can be made that the ultimate “sponsor” for the six Ag society seats, the six B&I seats and the ten (at 11/5/11) governor-controlled seats is an outside network…or maybe two or three smaller networks that seem to work remarkably well together. That’s 22…a majority…a majority that included the most powerful: the B&I seats, which controlled the chair, which controlled committee chairs and appointments, which control the university.
Even after voting power was taken away from the governor, the Old Guard still had 21 of the 30 votes in their pocket. Then Tom Wolf defeated Corbett in 2014. Did things get a little “iffy”? I know little or nothing about Tom Wolf’s background or any ties with any network. But I’m not bad at math. With the nine votes Wolf would control by the end of his term, do things get interesting for the Old Guard if Wolf’s appointees and the nine alumni trustees agree to “play nice”? No doubt totally unrelated…within 10 days of the election, the OGBOT had created four new positions that they would control. Mark Dambly was just elected vice-chairman of the BOT by a reported vote of 20-14. A breakdown was not provided, but we can be reasonably sure the “20” included the 12 locked down B&I and Ag votes, the four new votes under OGBOT control, and three holdover governor appointees (Benson, Silvis and Dambly). Without those four new votes, that’s 16-14…uncomfortably close. By the time Wolf has all six of his direct appointees in place, an 18-16 governor/alumni coalition could be created. This would give the existing power bloc until 2017 (if it hasn’t happened already) to convince, corrupt, compromise, and/or intimidate 1) one governor; 2) two or more voting members; and/or 3) the process. Unless you think they’d risk ceding control and power quietly.
So…this wraps it up, guys. 32 up, 32 down. Within a few days after reading the Freeh Report, I embarked on a personal mission, without bias, to try to find the truth. Full disclosure: I met Graham Spanier once in a casual setting. He was gracious. I met Joe Paterno once. He was gracious. I probably reffed Tim Curley in an intramural football game…no opinion of him one way or the other endured. I’ve rooted for Ira Lubert on a wrestling mat, Paul Suhey on a football field, and Dave Joyner on both. They were all the “good guys” to me. After five years of homework?…yes, I have some opinions now. As a final bit of research for this series, I reread a passage in Joe Posnanski’s book “Paterno.” On the morning of November 8, 2011, Paterno family consultant Dan McGinn came to the Paterno residence. Posnanski wrote:
“This is when McGinn learned just how far Paterno’s reputation and influence had fallen. He asked [former Penn State football branding director Guido] D’Elia for the name of one person on the Penn State Board of Trustees, just one, whom they could reach out to, to negotiate a gracious ending. D’Elia shook his head. ‘One person on the board, that’s all we need,’ McGinn said. D’Elia shook his head again. ‘It began in 2004,’ he whispered, referring to Paterno’s clash with Spanier. ‘The board started to turn. We don’t have anybody on the board now.’”
It occurred to me: Every single one of these 32 spotlighted trustees (sub Erickson for Spanier) lined up solidly against Joe? If you’re looking to create a defense for Joe Paterno, there’s your closing argument.
I will leave you with two thoughts:
1. The names matter.
In “Paterno Legacy: Enduring Lessons from the Life and Death of My Father,” Jay Paterno wrote, “They announced a unanimous vote. Unanimous. Not one of the trustees voted for my father. Not a one? Then it hit me. It was about the anonymity in unanimity.”
Whatever their motivation, each of these 32 trustees committed to an expensive path that cast an everlasting stain upon Penn State University. Each had a personal choice. Each made hash of it. “Hey, 32…I’ve got your moral obligation right here: Fess up. Apologize. Step down. Atone.” Only one took as many as three of those four steps. Lubert, Peetz, Frazier, Garban, Myers, Silvis, Tomalis, Suhey, Joyner, Deviney, Eckel, Masser, Riley, Dambly, Broadhurst, Strumpf, Clemens, Arnelle, Jones, Alexander, Huber, DiBerardinis, Shaffer, Greig, Hayes, Khoury, Hetherington, Allan, Erickson, Surma, Corbett, Hintz. Never forget.
2. The names don’t matter.
As long as control of the university rests in dirty hands, one trustee is the same as another. Surma out; Dandrea in. Same guy, different name. Let me know the next time an Ag or B&I trustee defies the Network line. I won’t bother to wait up.
Oh…there is one last item I’d like to address on my way out the door:
In response to an earlier installment, LafayetteBear took exception to characterization of these trustees as “feckless”:
“My issue with your use of the term [feckless] is that, while it applies, I do not think it is strong enough. IMO, the word suggests irresponsibility and incompetence rather than malign character and sociopathic disposition, which are qualities a lot of these Trustees have displayed. A more damning adjective would seem appropriate for them. And for the method of their selection.”
Hmmm…you know…when you look at it that way….
If only I had a “do over.”
But I don’t. Somebody lock up for me?
SR/BHF
“In 2002, then board chairman Edward Hintz, Jr. (an industrial trustee) appointed a committee to study and recommend changes to the process for electing industrial trustees. The outcome of the study was a name change to ‘business and industry’ trustees, and the election was eliminated. Not surprisingly, some are the largest financial contributors reported by the university. As Horst noted, the ‘stealth maneuver’ would henceforth eliminate outside elections altogether and move control to the business and industry trustees themselves, as they would control three of the five positions on the selection committee. Thus, not only would a small ‘power’ group of trustees control governance of the university, effectively there would be no way to remove or replace them.” (pennlive.com, updated 12/8/11)
Ray Blehar has said, “The so-called 33rd Trustee was Frederick Anton of the Pennsylvania Manufacturer's Association (PMA). PMA rigged the BOT mechanical and engineering elections for decades -- up until the point the Hintz and [now emeritus trustee Edward “Ted”] Junker revised the charter and came up with the insular selection process for the newly named Business and Industry Trustees.”
In an earlier installment, we learned that the six Ag society seats might have been fixed for years. For certain, the corruption in the B&I process has become institutionalized. In both cases, parties outside of the university have been involved in the hostile takeovers. You think the PMA/B&I group hijacked those positions so Karen Peetz could one day run the show, or that the Ag Societies commandeered theirs out of everlasting reverence for Keith Masser? At the top…who really controls these 12 positions?
The Ag seats are said to funnel up through Pennsylvania Farm Bureau and its former president and former PSU trustee Keith Eckel. Beyond the Penn State board, Eckel is connected to Corbett through service on his chosen gubernatorial transition team. Both bear the same “appearance of impropriety” outlined in our examination of Corbett. These six seats certainly appear to be under the control of the type of “network” we discussed in the last installment.
If possible, B&I connections are even more troubling. On paper, the Penn State board has been tied most strongly to The Second Mile…for many years…through the Business and Industry trustees, the group that has effectively seized control of the university. Long-time B&I trustee Lloyd Huck was a major ($23,000+, with further estate provisions) contributor to TSM, and his wife Dottie served on TSM’s board); William Schreyer’s daughter DrueAnne served on TSM’s board; L. J. Rowell, Jr. served on both Penn State and TSM boards, and was a TSM contributor; Ted Junker, involved in the 2002 B&I coup, and Quentin Wood were four-figure contributors, as were 11/5/11 trustees Linda Strumpf and James Broadhurst. In addition to his $12,000+ contribution to TSM, Ken Frazier shepherded the Freeh fraud, and…did there seem to you to be an air of desperation in his desire to “move on”? Though Ira Lubert, whose ties to TSM have been well-documented, was a governor-appointed trustee at 11/5/11, he’s now been adopted by the B&I group. This is just what we know at a glance. The control of these six seats, and indeed, the university, was gained and has been maintained dishonestly. The group responsible for that would appear to be heavily invested in the protection of The Second Mile, in need of that protection, or both. (Not a single 11/5/11 Ag trustee appeared on TSM’s donor list between 2005 and 2010. Of the 11/5/11 governor-appointed trustees, only Paul Silvis did. Lubert was a board member.)
If we consider the protection of The Second Mile to be within the scope of these outside parties, and that a trustee owes an allegiance to his/her sponsor, a picture comes into focus. Constructing a “path of influence” from the 32 11/5/11 trustees upward:
CORBETT – directly connected to the NETWORK.
GREIG, TOMALIS, ALLAN – connected to the NETWORK as appointees of Corbett.
KHOURY – connected to NETWORK as appointee of Corbett.
CLEMENS, DAMBLY, SILVIS, DI BERARDINIS – appointed to at least one term by Rendell, subject to future confirmation by Corbett; thus connected to NETWORK.
LUBERT – connected to NETWORK several ways: appointment by Rendell; connection to Rendell through casino licensing; direct close connections to The Second Mile; now a B&I trustee.
JOYNER – connected upward through Lubert to NETWORK; Lubert surrogate.
GARBAN – connected to NETWORK through TSM tie (son Drew, long-time TSM director).
ECKEL, HAYES, HETHERINGTON, MASSER, SHAFFER, HUBER – connected to NETWORK through corrupt election process controlled by Eckel/PFB; Eckel connection to Corbett, and “appearance of impropriety.”
BROADHURST, FRAZIER, HINTZ, PEETZ, STRUMPF, SURMA connected to NETWORK through B&I group’s close connections to TSM; with Frazier and Surma, both former board chairs having close personal connections to TSM.
That’s 24 of the 32 November 5, 2011 voting trustees who can plausibly be tied to such influence, directly or indirectly. I’ve asked myself “Why would every one of those trustees care so much about protecting The Second Mile, no matter what it costs the university? Why did PSU join the Corman lawsuit…on the NCAA’s side…against its own best interest? They can’t all be “bad guys,” can they? Aren’t there any honest trustees who would vote to do the ‘right’ thing, and if others hang…so be it? Why does my belly button look like this?”(Good research knows no bounds.) It just didn’t make sense. How do 32 trustees independently, and often uninformed, consistently make one baffling, terrible decision after another? But when I viewed it another way, it made perfect sense: What if they are not in their seats to serve Penn State? What if they are agents of their sponsors? At least a circumstantial case can be made that the ultimate “sponsor” for the six Ag society seats, the six B&I seats and the ten (at 11/5/11) governor-controlled seats is an outside network…or maybe two or three smaller networks that seem to work remarkably well together. That’s 22…a majority…a majority that included the most powerful: the B&I seats, which controlled the chair, which controlled committee chairs and appointments, which control the university.
Even after voting power was taken away from the governor, the Old Guard still had 21 of the 30 votes in their pocket. Then Tom Wolf defeated Corbett in 2014. Did things get a little “iffy”? I know little or nothing about Tom Wolf’s background or any ties with any network. But I’m not bad at math. With the nine votes Wolf would control by the end of his term, do things get interesting for the Old Guard if Wolf’s appointees and the nine alumni trustees agree to “play nice”? No doubt totally unrelated…within 10 days of the election, the OGBOT had created four new positions that they would control. Mark Dambly was just elected vice-chairman of the BOT by a reported vote of 20-14. A breakdown was not provided, but we can be reasonably sure the “20” included the 12 locked down B&I and Ag votes, the four new votes under OGBOT control, and three holdover governor appointees (Benson, Silvis and Dambly). Without those four new votes, that’s 16-14…uncomfortably close. By the time Wolf has all six of his direct appointees in place, an 18-16 governor/alumni coalition could be created. This would give the existing power bloc until 2017 (if it hasn’t happened already) to convince, corrupt, compromise, and/or intimidate 1) one governor; 2) two or more voting members; and/or 3) the process. Unless you think they’d risk ceding control and power quietly.
So…this wraps it up, guys. 32 up, 32 down. Within a few days after reading the Freeh Report, I embarked on a personal mission, without bias, to try to find the truth. Full disclosure: I met Graham Spanier once in a casual setting. He was gracious. I met Joe Paterno once. He was gracious. I probably reffed Tim Curley in an intramural football game…no opinion of him one way or the other endured. I’ve rooted for Ira Lubert on a wrestling mat, Paul Suhey on a football field, and Dave Joyner on both. They were all the “good guys” to me. After five years of homework?…yes, I have some opinions now. As a final bit of research for this series, I reread a passage in Joe Posnanski’s book “Paterno.” On the morning of November 8, 2011, Paterno family consultant Dan McGinn came to the Paterno residence. Posnanski wrote:
“This is when McGinn learned just how far Paterno’s reputation and influence had fallen. He asked [former Penn State football branding director Guido] D’Elia for the name of one person on the Penn State Board of Trustees, just one, whom they could reach out to, to negotiate a gracious ending. D’Elia shook his head. ‘One person on the board, that’s all we need,’ McGinn said. D’Elia shook his head again. ‘It began in 2004,’ he whispered, referring to Paterno’s clash with Spanier. ‘The board started to turn. We don’t have anybody on the board now.’”
It occurred to me: Every single one of these 32 spotlighted trustees (sub Erickson for Spanier) lined up solidly against Joe? If you’re looking to create a defense for Joe Paterno, there’s your closing argument.
I will leave you with two thoughts:
1. The names matter.
In “Paterno Legacy: Enduring Lessons from the Life and Death of My Father,” Jay Paterno wrote, “They announced a unanimous vote. Unanimous. Not one of the trustees voted for my father. Not a one? Then it hit me. It was about the anonymity in unanimity.”
Whatever their motivation, each of these 32 trustees committed to an expensive path that cast an everlasting stain upon Penn State University. Each had a personal choice. Each made hash of it. “Hey, 32…I’ve got your moral obligation right here: Fess up. Apologize. Step down. Atone.” Only one took as many as three of those four steps. Lubert, Peetz, Frazier, Garban, Myers, Silvis, Tomalis, Suhey, Joyner, Deviney, Eckel, Masser, Riley, Dambly, Broadhurst, Strumpf, Clemens, Arnelle, Jones, Alexander, Huber, DiBerardinis, Shaffer, Greig, Hayes, Khoury, Hetherington, Allan, Erickson, Surma, Corbett, Hintz. Never forget.
2. The names don’t matter.
As long as control of the university rests in dirty hands, one trustee is the same as another. Surma out; Dandrea in. Same guy, different name. Let me know the next time an Ag or B&I trustee defies the Network line. I won’t bother to wait up.
Oh…there is one last item I’d like to address on my way out the door:
In response to an earlier installment, LafayetteBear took exception to characterization of these trustees as “feckless”:
“My issue with your use of the term [feckless] is that, while it applies, I do not think it is strong enough. IMO, the word suggests irresponsibility and incompetence rather than malign character and sociopathic disposition, which are qualities a lot of these Trustees have displayed. A more damning adjective would seem appropriate for them. And for the method of their selection.”
Hmmm…you know…when you look at it that way….
If only I had a “do over.”
But I don’t. Somebody lock up for me?
SR/BHF
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