In an election that was preceded by public criticism from some other trustees and alumni, Ira Lubert was unanimously elected, 34-0, chairman of the Penn State Board of Trustees on Friday afternoon, ultimately running unopposed.
Mark Dambly was elected vice chair over Allison Goldstein, a Penn State graduate student and governor’s appointee, 20-14, during the board’s meeting at the Penn State Wilkes-Barre campus.
Lubert, a Philadelphia businessman and investor who had served as vice-chair since last summer, succeeds Keith Masser, who led the board for three consecutive one-year terms beginning in 2013.
‘It’s an honor to be selected Chair, and I look forward to serving Penn State in its most important role,’ Lubert said. ‘I want to thank Keith for his steadfast leadership over the past three and a half years… I appreciate that all of you have put your confidence in me as Chair, and I fully intend to live up to your expectations.’
Lubert was chair of the board’s legal subcommittee that approved nearly $93 million in settlements with 32 men who held Penn State responsible for alleged childhood sexual abuse by former Penn State football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.
After court documents in the university’s litigation with its insurer over who is responsible for those settlements became public, questions arose about how much vetting was done before settling the claims.
An expert report for the insurer, Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association Insurance, called the settlements “high and in some cases extremely high,” while questioning whether the university made any efforts to verify the credibility of the claims.
Kenneth Feinberg, mediator for the settlements, defended the settlement process, saying Penn State insisted on corroboration and that Lubert and his fellow subcommittee members “were hardnosed negotiators with a great deal of business experience in conducting high-risk negotiations.”
After the release of the court documents, alumni-elected trustee Anthony Lubrano said Lubert should face scrutiny over the settlements. Another alumni-elected trustee, Barbara Doran, said the roles of both Lubert and Dambly in the board’s handling of the Sandusky scandal had been a detriment to the university and its alumni.
But near the end of Friday’s meeting, Lubrano thanked and commended Lubert for his comments in executive session earlier in the day.
‘I have been on this board for four and a half years, and that was, in my mind, a demonstration of great leadership,’ Lubrano said, although he did not reveal what was said during that executive session.
After the meeting Lubrano said Lubert ‘extended an olive branch,’ and was forthright with board members as a candidate for the board chairmanship.
‘I’ve known Ira a long time… I’ve always wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt but the last few years have been tough, with what has transpired here, to do that,’ Lubrano said. ‘He took the first step this morning and extended the olive branch, so now as I say, he has to earn it. And I hope he does.’
Lubrano added that he recognizes the alumni-elected trustees, who have most often been the most vocal board members about the handling of the Sandusky scandal and enacting change to the board, don’t have the votes to have their own candidate for chair elected.
‘We could have run our another candidate, but we couldn’t have won,’ Lubrano said. ‘The reality is in order to accomplish anything you need to have 18 votes. We don’t have 18 votes so we have to think carefully about what we want to accomplish and how to do it. The way to do it,I don’t think is to poke the bear.’
Lubrano said Lubert made no promises on any particular issues, but he considered it a positive sign that Lubert, in his first act as chair, selected alumni-elected trustee Al Lord to serve on the executive committee.
Alumni advocacy group Penn Staters for Responsible Stewardship also said Lubert had a track record of donating to The Second Mile, Sandusky’s now defunct charity for at-risk youth from which prosecutors at his 2012 trial said he found and groomed his victims, and was on a regional board of directors for the charity. The group said those ties should have removed Lubert from consideration.
Lubert told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he never served on the charity’s board and that his name appeared on a list of regional board members after he allocated part of a United Way donation to The Second Mile. He said his name was removed after notifying the charity.
In the end, no trustee put forward another candidate on the floor at the board’s meeting on Friday. The candidate PS4RS had suggested, governor’s appointee Robert Capretto, seconded Lubert’s nomination.
Lubert is a Penn State alumnus and former Nittany Lion wrestler who served on the board from 1997-2000 and 2007-2013 as a governor’s appointee before returning as a trustee elected by the board to represent business and industry — replacing one-time board chair Karen Peetz, who resigned from the board in January 2015. He is chairman and co-founder of Independence Capital Partners and Lubert Adler Partners, LP.
Dambly is a governor’s appointee and president of Philadelphia-based real estate group Pennrose Properties who has been on the board since 2010.
