PENNSYLVANIA PIAA still needs observing

A committee is still keeping an eye on the association.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- Lawmakers should continue keeping a close watch on the association responsible for interscholastic athletics in most of the state, a legislative committee said in a report this week.
The watchdog Legislative Budget and Finance Committee found that the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association had begun to address recommendations for changing its financial and other practices, but it was too early to tell what impact those changes had. The legislative committee made the recommendations last year.
The authority
The committee was directed by law to conduct annual reviews of PIAA after a 1998 inquiry by a special Senate panel cited a series of problems at the athletic association. Senate leaders from both parties had complained that the organization wielded its power unfairly and punished those who complained.
The legislative committee's report recommended that the Pennsylvania Athletic Oversight Council -- a panel of administrators, coaches and legislators formed by lawmakers to keep tabs on the PIAA -- recommend to lawmakers a method for maintaining periodic oversight of the PIAA. To the acting chairman of the committee, that meant extending by another year the life of the council, which has a two-year life span that expires in March.
"In my view, we need to find some way to keep the oversight council in place," said Sen. Gerald J. LaValle, D-Beaver, who is acting as chairman upon the July death of Sen. Clarence Bell, the chairman of the panel. "Otherwise, we're going to have to revisit this thing again."
Under the law that formed it, the oversight council is to make a recommendation on whether the PIAA should stay in existence or be replaced by some other organization.
PIAA Executive Director Bradley R. Cashman said the report was fair but took issue with two provisions, including the call to extend the oversight council.
Objection
"We don't believe it's necessary," Cashman said. "We don't think it's appropriate either."
The PIAA has already complied with standards set down by the Legislature and still must answer to the House and Senate education committees as well as the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee, he said.
"To have the oversight council continue seems to be a duplication of effort," Cashman said.
Cashman also contested the report's call for greater centralization of the PIAA's finances, something to which he said the organization's member schools would object.
The PIAA is taking steps to allow its 11 district committees to become separate legal entities, allowing it to take the position that imposing centralized financial systems on the disparate organizations would be inappropriate, the report stated.
The PIAA administers interscholastic sports competition among roughly 1,400 public and private high schools, junior high schools and middle schools in Pennsylvania. Its $4 million budget for 2001-02 was in surplus by $185,000, the first operating surplus since 1996-97.