Posted in Boards, Contract, Contracts, Higher Education, LSU, Notable Quotables on April 17, 2013| 4 Comments »
“Our goal was to find a candidate that understands the traditions and practices of higher learning, but who also is willing to lead our great university through (anticipated) changes.”
—R. Blake Chatelain, chairman of the LSU Presidential Search Committee.
Posted in Boards, Contract, Contracts, Ethics, Higher Education, LSU on April 16, 2013| 5 Comments »
Vetting (v.): To subject to thorough examination or evaluation (The Free Online Dictionary).
Did the LSU Board of supervisors make even a token attempt at vetting the applicants for LSU President before settling on F. King Alexander, current president of the University of California Long Beach?
Vetting (v.) The process of performing a background check on someone before offering them employment (Wikipedia).
Did Long Beach State make even a cursory attempt at vetting F. King Alexander before he was chosen president of that university?
Vetting (v.): To make a careful and critical examination (Oxford Dictionary).
Okay, the last definition was in deference to the Oxford Roundtable Foundation, the organization headed by Alexander but not really affiliated with Oxford University.
The LSU Board of Supervisors meets today (Wednesday) to finalize the details of Alexander’s contract.
But back to the original question: was there even a perfunctory effort to vet the leader of Louisiana’s flagship university by the LSU Board of Supervisors?
Besides the fact that Alexander’s own curriculum vitae indicates that the highest level to which he rose as a teacher was a five-year (1997-2001) stint as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana before making the quantum leap to the presidency of Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky, where he served for another five years (2001-2005).
Apparently, it isn’t necessary to pose the vetting question with Murray State; he simply succeeded his father, S. Kern Alexander to the presidency of the school.
Assuming that it’s the norm for an assistant professor to scale the academic ladder to president of a 10,000-student university in a single move (which, of course, it certainly is not), it’s his handling of a major grant from a prominent movie executive http://thugthebook.blogspot.com/ while at Long Beach State that we will examine here. Additional analyses of his qualifications will be provided in subsequent posts which we will offer for simultaneous release to the LSU Reveille and a couple of other choice blogs.
In May of 2007, King signed off on a three-page pledge agreement by movie producer/director Steven Spielberg’s Wunderkinder Foundation in which the foundation pledged nearly $1.4 million to support Long Beach State’s Master’s in Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing Program within the Film and Electronic Arts Department.
The money was given by Wunderkinder in three incremental payments. The first payment, $590,000 was payable upon the effective date of the pledge agreement (May 31, 2007). The second installment of $400,000 was due on the first anniversary of the effective date of the pledge agreement (May 31, 2008) and the final payment of $388,000 was scheduled for May 31, 2009, the second anniversary date of the pledge agreement.
The pledge agreement said, in part:
• The pledged funds are designated to (i) support the Master’s in Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing Program at the (university); (ii) support the conversion of space for a soundstage and editing studio in the (Department), and (iii) support equipment maintenance, replacement, and upgrades within the (Department);
• If (the university foundation) should for any reason lose its tax-exemption so that gifts to it no longer qualify as tax deductible, or if the pledged funds are used for any purpose not specifically permitted under this pledge agreement, this pledge agreement shall terminate immediately and pledgor (Wunderkinder) shall have no further obligation thereafter to pay any amounts not previously funded.
• A breach by (the university foundation) of this pledge agreement may cause irreparable injury to pledgor not readily measurable in money and for which pledgor shall be entitled to seek injunctive relief or to terminate this pledge agreement without further obligation to (the foundation), or both.
All three checks were delivered to the university’s Film and Electronic Arts Department as scheduled.
The third check of $388,000 was issued through Comerica Bank-California on May 18, 2009. But six weeks earlier, on April 6, Alexander had issued a directive suspending future admissions for the program, effectively killing it—even as Spielberg was said to have been preparing to renew the grant for another three years.
The check was not only negotiated in the full knowledge that it would not go for its intended purpose, but some of the money was then moved from the donor foundation account into the Film and Electronic Arts general account to be mingled with state funds and used for salaries.
Because there were still five students finishing the program, each received $10,000 under the grant, leaving $338,000 that went for other purposes—an apparent violation of the terms of the pledge agreement.
When the financial crunch hit colleges and universities across the country, Long Beach State was not spared and university faculty took a 10 percent “furlough” pay cut for the 2009-2010 academic year–ostensibly because of funding cuts. Later that year, however, Alexander announced that additional money had been “found.”
The terms of the furlough that came into existence in the fall of 2009 specifically said, “Faculty Unit employees whose salary is 100 percent funded from grants and contracts not funded from the state general fund shall not be subject to this furlough agreement.”
Yet a faculty member whose salary was to have been funded 100 percent by the Spielberg/Wunderkinder grant saw a 10 percent reduction in his salary. That 10 percent was apparently re-allocated for general expenses rather than for the purposes specified in the pledge agreement which could be interpreted as a breach of the pledge contract.
To make matters worse, Spielberg was never informed of the termination of the Master’s in Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing Program.
Spielberg, meanwhile, was experiencing problems of his own and for whatever reasons, did not pursue the matter. Wunderkinder in 2008 had become a victim of the giant Ponzi scheme perpetrated by Bernard Madoff. With assets of $12.6 million as of November of 2006, Wunderkinder’s financial fortunes had suffered right along with other investors in Madoff’s scheme.
By late 2009, even though Wunderkinder was financially crippled by Madoff, Spielberg continued his personal philanthropic activities on behalf of the University of Southern California, among others .
Vetting.
Posted in Boards, Education, Governor's Office, Higher Education, LSU on March 19, 2013| 7 Comments »
Did the LSU Board of Supervisors opt for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in its selection of F. King Alexander, 50, as the next LSU president?
Will the LSU faithful, so alarmed at the prospects of an appointment of Secretary of Economic Development Stephen Moret to the position, end up wishing he had gotten it after all?
Most important of all, with academics, integrity and healthcare already sacrificed at the Altar of Jindal, will the LSU football program survive?
Perhaps these and other questions will be answered in due course but for the time being, let’s take a look at the paradox that is F. King Alexander.
The first issues that must be addressed are his credentials and his motivation for coming to LSU.
The politically-charged atmosphere in Louisiana in general and LSU in particular is such that one must question the wisdom of anyone wanting to walk into such a volatile situation. The mere fact that one would even apply for the position would seem to call his or qualifications into question.
The LSU student newspaper, The Reveille, was contemplating filing a lawsuit—and still might do so—to learn who all the applicants were. But considering who the winner was the paper’s editors may wish to reconsider its efforts to learn who the losers were.
On the one hand, there is the F. King Alexander who two years ago admonished state governments for “backing out of their responsibility” to keep public colleges working and affordable.
On the other hand, there is the F. King Alexander who operates what critics describe as a “vanity” conference operation that capitalizes on the Oxford University name without the benefit of its being officially affiliated with the English school.
The Baton Rouge Advocate describes Alexander as “a nationally respected up and comer” and his 28-minute speech in February of 2011at The 14th Annual Travers Conference on Ethics and Accountability in Government Financing California: Strategies for Fiscal Housekeeping was a direct assault on state governments’ failure to adequately fund state colleges, thus allowing private universities and for-profit colleges to syphon students away from public institutions.
His talk was a blistering attack on states that he said have taken federal funds for higher education while at the same time, cutting state appropriations by like amounts. Meanwhile, federal grants continue to increase for private schools.
It was the kind of rhetoric that college professors will embrace enthusiastically but the kind that got Alexander’s predecessor, John Lombardi canned by the Board of Supervisors—at the direction of Jindal who doesn’t like to be criticized by subordinates.
Then there is Alexander’s Oxford Round Table connection.
The Oxford Round Table is a series of interdisciplinary conferences that was founded by Alexander’s father, Kern Alexander but now run by F. King Alexander and his wife.
The purpose of the Oxford Round Table is “to promote education, art, science, religion and charity by means of academic conferences and publication of scholarly papers,” according to an online profile.
The organization has incorporated, dissolved and reincorporated several times in different states, including Kentucky, Illinois and Florida—both as a for-profit and as a non-profit. In 2008, the non-profit Oxford Round Table, Ltd. was established in the United Kingdom.
A 2009 report was critical of the organization because, the report said, it does not make its lack of academic connection to Oxford University clear.
Two years earlier, Times Higher Education reported that the organization had been criticized because it was trading on the name of Oxford University and failed to properly inform invitees that it had no formal academic links to the university.
The Oxford Round Table also has attracted controversy in at least three states, including Louisiana, over the cost of school boards’ paying for administrators to attend its conferences. This led to a successful legislative effort to tighten travel rules for school board members statewide, according to a 2003 New Orleans Times-Picayune story.
It remains to be seen if Alexander will bring his pro-funding rhetoric with him or whether his Oxford Round Table will set up shop in Baton Rouge—or both.
Either way, it should be interesting—like perhaps a reprise of the old Carol Burnett Show skit As the Stomach Turns.
Posted in Boards, Ethics, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, LSU, Privatization on March 18, 2013| 11 Comments »
This week’s civics lesson will take a look at how ethics for public officials, much like the Golden Rule, is based in large part on who has the gold.
And apparently, if you are appointed to the LSU Board of Supervisors by Gov. Bobby Jindal, you are considered golden.
Now, with the pending approval of the takeover of two LSU-run hospitals by a Shreveport foundation, it’s déjà vu all over again—except different.
On Jan. 16, 1996, the State Board of ethics issued an opinion that Lovan Thomas, owner and publisher of the Natchitoches Times newspaper and of Springhill Press printing company, violated state ethics laws when his printing company printed a tourism brochure promoting the Cane River through the Kisatchie National Forest.
Though Thomas was a member of the Natchitoches Parish Tourist Commission, the printing project was not initially a project of the tourist commission and Springhill Press, in late 1993 charged $10,000 for printing the brochure, a practice the ethics board more than two years later ruled was an ethics violation.
On July 17, 1996, the State Board of Ethics issued a second opinion that the Times could not provide printing services for the student newspaper at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches because Thomas was a member of the Louisiana Board of Trustees for State Colleges and Universities, the governing board for the university.
Three months later, on Oct. 25, the Board of Ethics struck again. This time the board ruled that the Times was prohibited from publishing an NSU legal notice for bids on a printing contract despite a state law which required that public notices by public bodies “shall be published in a newspaper of general circulation printed in the parish in which the budget unit (NSU) is situated.”
The Times was the only newspaper of general circulation in Natchitoches Parish. Moreover, the Times was the Natchitoches Parish Police Jury’s official legal journal and it was generally understood that NSU was required to publish its legal notices in the parish’s legal journal.
The ethics board ruled that Thomas was prohibited from assisting the Times in its contract with Northwestern while receiving compensation through his publishing company.
So, instead of printing its paper at home, NSU was forced to travel 70 miles to Shreveport for the service. And instead of paying $4 a square (100 words), NSU was forced to place its legal advertisements in the Shreveport Times at a cost of about $25 per square.
Disgusted with the entire process, Lovan resigned from the Board of Trustees and the parish tourist commission.
Even then, the Ethics Board continued to thwart Thomas in his attempts to do business with Northwestern.
On May 21, 1997, the board ruled that because state law required a two-year waiting period from the date of his resignation from the Board of Trustees, Thomas and the Natchitoches Times were still prohibited from bidding on and receiving advertising contracts with the university.
But now, not quite 16 years later, and with a State Ethics Board that has been gutted by Gov. Bobby Jindal, it is somehow okay for a foundation to enter into an agreement to take over two LSU public hospitals in Shreveport and Monroe even though the vice chairman and incoming president/CEO of the foundation slated to take over the facilities also sits on the LSU Board of Supervisors which currently oversees the hospitals.
The LSU Board of Supervisors on Monday tabled until March 27 approval of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the board and the Biomedical Research Foundation (BRF) that would call for the foundation to enter into a partnership with LSU Medical Center in Shreveport and E.A. Conway Hospital in Monroe.
Willis-Knighten Health System and Christus Health Shreveport-Bossier had expressed interest in the Shreveport facility when LSU first started seeking partners with available cash in 2012.
In Monroe, negotiations had been ongoing between E.A. Conway and St. Francis Medical Center but those talks were broken off by the state last week when LSU officials suddenly decided that the grass was greener on BRF’s side of the fence.
State Sen. Francis Thompson (D-Delhi) called the BRF model “the innovative, forward-thinking model that would elevate what are already the best hospitals of their kind in Louisiana and beyond. It also keeps both hospitals under the same management umbrella, which is appropriate,” he said.
Biomedical Research Foundation currently leases research labs to the LSU System. The annual lease payments of $4 million to $5 million paid by LSU represent a major source of income for the foundation.
John F. George, Jr., M.D. is Vice Chairman of Biomedical Research Foundation and is slated to become BRF President and CEO on March 27, the same date as the scheduled vote on the foundation’s takeover of the two hospitals. The Jindal administration has dismissed any talk of a conflict of interest by pointing out that George will not receive a salary as president and CEO of the foundation, thereby allowing him to remain as a member of the LSU Board of Supervisors.
George, who made two contributions of $5,000 each to Jindal’s campaign in 2007 and 2008, according to campaign records, said he will recuse himself from the LSU board’s action on March 27.
But that Oct. 25, 1996, Ethics Board opinion would seem to indicate that recusal was not sufficient to avoid a conflict. That ruling, in addition to saying that state ethics laws prohibited Thomas from participating in the Board of Trustees’ decision to contract with the Natchitoches Times for printing services, also said the participation question “cannot be cured by recusal since (state law) prohibits an appointed member of a Board from curing a participating problem through disqualification.”
Salary or no, recusal or no, the appearance of impropriety should be sufficient in some quarters as to demand George’s resignation from the LSU Board of Supervisors in light of his cozy relationship with BRF.
But appearances, like beauty, appear to be in the eye of the beholder—in this case, Gov. Bobby Jindal.
And Jindal wrote—that is, re-wrote—the ethics rules within weeks of taking office in January of 2008, prompting the mass resignation of nine of the board’s 11 members, including board administrator Richard Sherburne, in July of that year.
So now, with watered-down rules and a puppet board, there appears to be no one left to challenge the administration’s claim of no conflict of interest.
Posted in Boards, Campaign Contributions, Commissions, Governor's Office, Louisiana Purchase on January 6, 2013| 3 Comments »
Never let it be said that Piyush Jindal doesn’t remember his friends. As long as the word “friends” is synonymous with the word “cash.”
Of the seven new appointments and one re-appointment to the University of Louisiana System board, six of those combined to contribute nearly $147,000 to Jindal political campaigns from 2003 through 2011, according to state campaign finance records.
The terms of seven of the 16 member board expired on Dec. 31. The eighth position was vacated when attorney Jimmy Faircloth, Jindal’s former executive counsel, resigned after two years on the board and was replaced by his wife, Kelly Faircloth, a chiropractor.
Faircloth, while serving on the board, recently was contracted by Jindal to represent the State Department of Education in a pair of lawsuits challenging the state voucher system and the teacher tenure revisions, both enacted last year by the state legislature as part of Jindal’s education reform package.
Faircloth contributed $14,000 and his former Alexandria law firm contributed an additional $9,000 to Jindal campaigns in 2003, 2006 and 2010. Of that total, Faircloth and his firm each contributed $5,000 to Jindal on the same date in December of 2006.
Only one of three re-appointees, Jimmie “Beau” Martin, Jr. of Cut Off, contributed to Jindal. Martin, family members and three family-owned businesses combined to contribute $34,278.30, records show.
Jimmy Long, Sr. of Natchitoches and Winfred Sibille of Sunset were also re-appointed to new six-year terms but neither was found to have contributed to Jindal.
The other four new appointees and their contributions include:
• Gary Solomon of New Orleans, chairman of Crescent Bank and Trust (replacing Renee Lapeyrolerie): $35,000 from Solomon and family members in 2003, 2007 and 2008 and another $7,199 from Crescent Bank in 2007 and 2009;
• Mark Romero of New Iberia, executive vice president of Brown & Brown Insurance (replacing Paul Aucoin of Morgan City): $1,000 from Romero in 2008 and $9,000 by his insurance firm in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011;
• Robert Shreve of Baton Rouge, CEO of Gulf South Business Systems and Consultants (replacing Russell Mosely of Baton Rouge): $11,000 in 2007 and 2009 and $1,000 by his firm in 2011;
• John Condos of Lake Charles (replacing Louis Lambert): $20,500 by Condos and his wife.
No one expects any governor to appoint political opponents to state boards and commissions but some elected officials might choose to appoint small-time contributors; appointment considerations with this governor, however, just don’t work that way.
Instead, Piyush has displayed a disturbing propensity to favor the big-dollar contributors in making his appointments and the same old names keep popping up, indicating that his solid core support base may be a smaller fraternity than one might assume.
It’s either that or he simply chooses to bestow appointments on only his biggest contributors and ignore the rest.
$2.50 each or three for $6.00
Louisiana Voice 