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HARRISBURG — For nearly two years, the Shapiro administration has refused to say whether a state watchdog under the governor’s jurisdiction investigated Pennsylvania’s network of agencies that are supposed to help older adults who are abused and neglected.
However, records show state investigators produced a report and provided it to the governor’s office well over two years ago.
In an email obtained by Spotlight PA, a staffer for the governor’s office wrote that investigators with the Office of State Inspector General produced a report stemming from a probe into the Department of Aging and provided it to Gov. Josh Shapiro in early 2024.
The report’s findings are a mystery. Shapiro has not released it publicly, and a spokesperson said such reports are “confidential.” However, previous governors have released to the public findings from some of the inspector general’s probes.
Shapiro’s predecessor, Democrat Tom Wolf, publicized an investigative report in 2018 stemming from a near-identical probe by the inspector general into the aging department that exposed significant problems. The public airing led to legislative hearings, as well as major changes at the department, which monitors the quality of older adult abuse and neglect investigations.
The secrecy makes it impossible to know what problems, if any, the latest probe uncovered in the state’s ability to protect older adults from harm.
The Shapiro administration’s reluctance to even acknowledge the report also trains the spotlight anew on the inspector general’s work and how much of it the public has the right to scrutinize.
Shapiro’s office did not dispute the existence of a report on the Department of Aging. But it declined to answer specific questions, including whether it provided a copy to the department so that the agency could address any potential problems raised by investigators. (An aging spokesperson said the department has not seen a copy, but stopped short of saying that it was unaware of the contents.)
Shapiro spokesperson Rosie Lapowsky wrote in an email that the inspector general’s investigative reports are “confidential” and aren’t released publicly to “protect the integrity of the investigation and the employees who may have participated in it.”
Lapowsky did not respond when asked to pinpoint the section of the law that says these reports must remain confidential. Neither did a spokesperson with the inspector general’s office.
The Office of State Inspector General, or OSIG, is one of Pennsylvania’s lesser-known investigative agencies, despite the fact that it has substantive law enforcement powers.
It was created in 1987 by executive order to perform investigations and make the governor and heads of executive agencies aware of problems or deficiencies in agency programs, operations, and contracting. In 1994, the office also began investigating welfare fraud and conducting collection activities for public benefits programs administered by the Department of Human Services, according to the state’s website.
In 2017, lawmakers passed legislation, signed into law, that memorialized the office in statute, meaning it would no longer be subject to executive orders that governors could potentially rescind. It also gave OSIG law enforcement powers, including the ability to issue subpoenas and search warrants. The office’s Bureau of Special Investigations can launch probes based on complaints from private individuals, state employees, or state officials. In some instances, the office can initiate its own investigations.
Spotlight PA spoke with four former Department of Aging employees who were interviewed — some of them multiple times — by the inspector general’s office in 2023, the year Shapiro took office.
They said investigators looked into what changes had been made in the wake of the report released in 2018. For instance, the office asked whether and how the department had strengthened its oversight of the 52 county aging agencies that conduct abuse and neglect investigations into older adults. It also requested data collected by the department on whether those county agencies were complying with state regulations to minimize or eliminate the risk of harm for the state’s most vulnerable older adults.
Two of the four people who spoke to Spotlight PA said they also told investigators they believed they were being targeted for retaliation by the Shapiro administration for speaking out about problems with the department’s oversight of older adult protective services.
Spotlight PA has spent the past two years investigating the state of those services. Through its series “Unprotected,” the newsroom exposed serious faults and deficiencies in how counties investigate abuse and neglect allegations, including taking too long to conduct investigations — potentially leaving older adults at risk — and flatly rejecting certain possible cases for investigation.
The news organization has also reported on concerns that despite these lapses, the Shapiro administration has relaxed its oversight of the counties — a criticism that Aging Secretary Jason Kavulich, appointed by Shapiro in 2023, has repeatedly rejected.
Earlier this year, Spotlight PA sought several years’ worth of emails from the Department of Aging through a public records request. The department provided more than 1,000 pages of records — in many cases, redacting large portions of the email chains.
In one of those emails, dated Feb. 13, 2025, two members of Shapiro’s communications team discussed how to respond to an upcoming Spotlight PA story on a Philadelphia woman with dementia who died after her local aging agency took months to investigate her case.
In the email chain, a deputy press secretary in Shapiro’s office noted that the news organization had asked about the status of the 2023 inspector general’s investigation, writing: “For your awareness, [Spotlight PA] also asked us and OSIG about an OSIG report into Aging that the gov received in early 2024.”
The next line in the message is redacted, but the deputy press secretary closed the email by saying that Shapiro’s main spokesperson was handling the matter but that “I wanted to flag because I am sure it’ll be part of this story.”
At the time, the Shapiro administration did not publicly respond to questions about the inspector general’s investigation into the department, including whether a report was authored and whether the governor had seen it. The administration has continued to refuse to answer questions about it.
Kavulich previously told Spotlight PA that he was interviewed by the inspector general’s office and that he was informed at the time their questions were “related” to the prior probe that resulted in the 2018 report. He said he did not know if a report was produced.
“I have never seen a report. I have no knowledge of a report,” Kavulich said in a March 2025 interview.
Later that year, he again denied knowledge of the report during testimony before a state Senate committee.
And in a statement this week, aging spokesperson Karen Gray said in an email: “No one at the Department of Aging has received or reviewed a copy of any OSIG report in 2023, 2024, 2025, or 2026.”
Public versus secret
The 2017 law that codified the inspector general’s office is silent on whether reports stemming from the agency’s investigations are required to remain confidential. In fact, it says the office has the power to issue public reports, and has to produce annual reports to the legislature that include information on its investigations and specific recommendations for improving state agencies or programs.
But those yearly reports are light on details — describing the inspector general’s mission and work in broad strokes — particularly when it comes to the office’s special investigations into state agency programs. The reports provide the most detail about the office’s work rooting out fraud in public assistance benefits and efforts to get restitution from individuals who try to game the system.
Neither the 2023-24 nor the 2024-25 annual reports to the legislature reference the inspector general’s investigation into the aging department or the subsequent report provided to the governor’s office.
The inspector general’s office did not answer questions about why some investigative reports are shared with the public while others are kept secret. What is certain is that shielding such reports has created controversy over the years.
In 2017, for instance, Wolf was criticized by some in the Capitol for refusing to make public an inspector general report involving allegations that his onetime lieutenant governor, Mike Stack, and Stack’s wife had verbally abused and mistreated state employees assigned to work for them.
In 2011, then-Gov. Tom Corbett kept secret a biting inspector general’s report, obtained a year later by the Philadelphia Inquirer, that exposed the lax work habits of several administrative law judges for the state’s Liquor Control Board. And in 2012, the inspector general produced a report, also never made public, detailing serious allegations that top LCB officials accepted gifts from the agency’s vendors and other businesses with an interest in liquor regulation. That report, also later obtained by The Inquirer, led to a probe by the State Ethics Commission.
On the flip side, past administrations have made public a number of investigative reports or summaries over the years, and those are available for viewing on the inspector general’s website. They include a report that examined the Wolf administration’s bungling of a statewide referendum that would provide legal recourse to survivors of child sexual abuse and another examining a cheating scandal at the Pennsylvania State Police academy.
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