The next time somebody wants to know the salary of Penn State University's famed football coach Joe Paterno, it may not require a trip to court.

If Mr. Paterno is among the school's 25 highest-salaried employees, the amount becomes public automatically under the state's expanded open records bill, which Gov. Ed Rendell signed into law Thursday.

Penn State also must begin sharing data required by Internal Revenue Service Form 990, which nonprofit agencies must submit to the federal government.

Yet even with the new rules, Pennsylvanians will have relatively little right to see records that might show them how their largest public campus spends its state money. The same is true of Pennsylvania's three other state-related campuses -- the University of Pittsburgh, Temple University and Lincoln University -- which, along with Penn State, share more than $600 million in annual operating subsidies from the state.

The first major rewrite of the open records law in half a century brings those four schools under its umbrella, but it does so in a way that exempts them from most of the disclosure requirements that apply to the 14 universities belonging to the State System of Higher Education, including California, Clarion, Edinboro, Indiana and Slippery Rock in Western Pennsylvania.

"We lobbied aggressively. We said the state-related schools should be treated the same if they want those large amounts of state funds," said Barry Kauffman, executive director of Common Cause of Pennsylvania. "It's a battle that we lost."

The State System, which was named in the previous law, already offers a public accounting of all public spending down to presidential contracts, vender agreements, employee pay and spending receipts.

"Basically, as far as I can tell, the only change for us is we'll have five days to respond instead of 10," said Kenn Marshall, the Right-to-Know officer for the State System's central office.

For the state's community colleges, the law leaves no doubt they must comply. Those schools were not named in the previous law but are in this one and will face the same disclosure rules as State System universities, said Erik Arneson, an aide to state Sen. Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Chester, a leader in the open records effort.

But the law as it applies to state-related schools is much narrower, Mr. Arneson said.

For one, the required release of Form 990 data, though a change for Penn State, should have little impact on Pitt, Temple and Lincoln because those schools already file the federal form, Mr. Arneson said.

A second provision calls for disclosure of the 25 highest-salaried workers -- a requirement that goes beyond the five highest-paid employees reportable under the federal form.

The state-related schools also must keep for at least seven years records required of them by the law and provide free access to the data on their Web sites. The schools can release more information voluntarily, but there's no guarantee.

"If they're denying access today, and it's not on a Form 990, then there's nothing in the bill that changes that," Mr. Arneson said.

Some observers said the less stringent disclosure rules placed on state-related schools were a recognition of their status unique in the country as quasi-state, rather than state-owned, campuses. Others said the schools escaped greater scrutiny because of strong political sway in Harrisburg that included alumni who serve in the General Assembly.

"It was a compromise between those who wanted the status quo, meaning that state-related schools would not be covered at all, and those who wanted the state-related schools included, whole hog," Mr Arneson said. "It was a middle ground."

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision last fall that led the State Employees' Retirement System to release Mr. Paterno's salary illustrated just how charged the issue of campus spending has become in a state that has seen double-digit tuition increases in recent years.

Pennsylvania's public universities are the fourth most expensive in the nation, in large part because of prices at the state-related schools, though officials on those campuses say it has less to do with spending excesses than lagging state support.

They sometimes cite groups such as the Center for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University. Last month, it ranked Pennsylvania 42nd among states in terms of the percent increase from fiscal 1998 to fiscal 2008 in general fund tax appropriation for public campus operations.

As the records law legislation advanced through the General Assembly this year and last, the aid given to state-related schools compared with that given state universities was cited both by those pushing the state-related campuses to share more records and others who resisted it.

It comes down to how one looks at the numbers.

On the one hand, state aid in 2007-08 covered a larger share of the State System of Higher Education's operating needs -- 36 percent -- than was typical at state-related schools. For instance, state aid covered just 9 percent of Penn State's operating needs and 11 percent of those at Pitt, according to both schools.

But in actual dollars, the comparison flips. The $614 million in base state aid shared last year by the four state-related schools was larger than the $484 million going to the 14 State System schools. The state-related campuses also received more collectively than the $229 million appropriation shared by community colleges statewide.

"Kind of ironic, isn't it?" said Mr. Kauffman, alluding to the fact that a class of schools receiving more state dollars is required by the new law to disclose less.

For their part, officials at Penn State said such arguments fail to acknowledge that state-related schools with their research missions operate in a vastly different arena than state schools.

Penn State has long made thousands of pages of information available about its finances, either voluntarily or as required by the Higher Education Fiscal Information Disclosure Act, school President Graham Spanier said in remarks to state legislators.

That act requires disclosure of such items as mean and median campus pay for types of employees, budget and expense figures by campus unit and campus policy statements, though it does not require full disclosure of actual spending receipts and other items found in open records laws.

"Almost every school in the state, most of which are private, receives some tax dollars,' " spokesman Bill Mahon said last week. "How do you balance the lack of interest in details about those schools' budgets with interest in details of Penn State's budget?"

Requiring the university to fully open files on such items as vendor agreements would, among other things, make it harder to hold costs down in future negotiations with other firms, the school said. Disclosing employee compensation might put the school at a disadvantage to recruit and retain faculty who are also being courted by private campuses not covered by records laws.

"It's not a matter of you lose just a science professor. You lose an entire lab of assistants, and then a line of funding from the private sector or the federal government," Mr. Mahon said. "There's an economic impact on the state of Pennsylvania."

Pitt spokesman Robert Hill said the university will follow the law.

"Obviously, we did not enact the law but we will comply with the letter of it. And that is our comment."

Mr. Kauffman said Penn State's hardship arguments strike him as weak given that a number of campuses in Pennsylvania and beyond manage to operate at present under open records laws.

Still, despite the outcome regarding state-related campuses, he said it's hard to equate the transparency achieved under the new records law as a glass half empty. "At least we're dealing with a glass now, instead of a 50-year-old mug."