Jun 2, 2019 3 min read

Commonwealth Court ruled Friday that California University of Pennsylvania must provide an Observer-Reporter staff writer with records of donations from the contractor that received millions of dollars to build a campus parking garage that later developed structural problems.

In what appears to be the first decision addressing this question, a three-judge panel found that the state open-records law doesn’t exempt government agencies like Cal U. – which is part of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education – from disclosing records of corporate donations.

Reporter Gideon Bradshaw had requested all records involving donations from Manheim Corp. to The Foundation for California University from 2008 through 2013. In 2009, the Mt. Lebanon company won a $10.5 million contract to build the five-level Vulcan garage, which opened the following year.

Bradshaw made his request in August, two weeks after the school brought a lawsuit against Manheim and other firms over the partial collapse of the five-level Vulcan garage on Aug. 26, 2016, which was move-in day that year. The garage has been unused ever since. The contractor has denied liability for the cave-in.

Cal U. filed an appeal after the state Office of Open Records found that the school had to turn over records of Manheim’s donations to the foundation. Much of the Commonwealth Court’s ruling dealt with language in the Right To Know Law that protects records that identify an “individual who lawfully makes a donation” to a government agency.

Attorney Michael Ferguson, who represents the state university system, contended that that section also exempted records of donations from corporations such as Manheim. The judges hearing the appeal disagreed, citing the definition of “individual” set out elsewhere in state law.

“An individual is a ‘natural person,’ while the broader term ‘person’ includes both natural persons and other types of entities, such as corporations,” read a nine-page opinion by Judge Kevin Brobson. “Under those definitions, a corporation is a person, but it is not an individual.”

Brobson also wrote that the foundation’s fundraising and management of donations on behalf of Cal U. amount to a “governmental function,” so the school has an obligation to disclose records of those activities.

Cal U. has 30 days to appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court.

“What I can say is we’re reviewing the decision,” wrote PASSHE spokesman David Pidgeon in an email, “and we will respond at an appropriate time and in an appropriate venue.”

Bradshaw and the Observer-Reporter were represented by attorneys Colin Fitch and Cary Douglas Jones of the Washington firm Marriner, Jones and Fitch.