FAYETTEVILLE - The new chief of the University of Arkansas’ Advancement Division described a staff restructuring for the new fiscal year as something he would have done even if he’d not taken on his predecessor’s multimillion-dollar budget deficit.
Vice Chancellor Chris Wyrick said the overspending did compel him to do the restructuring immediately,rather than take time to become better acquainted with the division’s offices and its nearly 180 part-time and full time employees.
“I was not afforded the luxury of time,” said Wyrick, now the Fayetteville campus’s chief fundraiser.
In December, Chancellor G. David Gearhart and other UA administrators acknowledged that the Advancement Division had accumulated a deficit over a period of years because of overspending, before Wyrick took over officially July 1.
The university has estimated that the division closed its approximately $10 million budget on June, 30, 2012, having overspent by about $3.37 million. But documents it released under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act were unclear on the exact amount of overspending in that and previous fiscal years.
University administrators since have declined to reveal details on how the division’s fiscal 2013 budget was revised to help rein in the deficit, citing a review under way by the state’s Legislative Audit Division.
Wyrick said he could not say how the restructuring affected the division’s budget because it hasn’t been finalized. Officials said the division’s budget for fiscal 2014, which began July 1, won’t be finalized until Friday.
Wyrick announced the restructuring in a July 11 news release, saying it included the promotion of 11 employees. Though UA officials have said the overspending was driven primarily by the hiring of employees without revenue to support their salaries, the restructuring did not cut any of the division’s 179 positions.
The 179 total includes vacant positions that Wyrick intends to fill this year to replace employees who have resigned. No one was fired, laid off or encouraged to retire to save money in the budget, he said.
According to an organizational chart, there are about 14 vacant positions in the division.
“The primary reason for doing the [human resources] study was not financially motivated,” Wyrick said. “But to make it very clear, anytime you work in state government, finances are always going to be considered as part of the equation … but are not going to be the driving force.”
The Advancement Division focuses on outreach activities such as fundraising, public relations and alumni activities.
EMPLOYEE OVERWHELMED
University officials’ discovery of the overspending in mid-2012 led to Gearhart’s decision later in the year not to retain the division’s vice chancellor, Brad Choate, after his appointment expired June 30. Wyrick was hired to replace Choate effective July 1, but came aboard April 1 to ease the transition.
The overspending also led to the demotion and reassignment of Choate’s budget director, Joy Sharp. Sharp also was allowed to finish out her employment through June 30.
In correspondence, university officials said they believed Sharp was “overwhelmed” by the growing financial duties involved with her position. In an email, Gearhart chastised Choate for abdicating his budget-oversight responsibilities to her, saying Choate had gone so far as to give Sharp his log-in credentials to the computerized budget system, a violation of a university policy that permits only the vice chancellor to approve expenditures at a certain level.
UA Treasurer Jean Schook wrote that Choate didn’t monitor the division’s finances in his five years on campus.
Wyrick found during his human-resources study that Sharp had been doing the job of more than two people, he said. Officially, her duties covered both finances and human-resources work, but the growing duties on the finance side had meant that division employees in other departments were doing more human-resources work.
Wyrick decided to centralize the finance and human-resources work in his office, and he redirected employees who had been doing those duties part time to other initiatives, he said. He appointed the employee working on unraveling the budget problems, Denise Reynolds, to assistant vice chancellor for finance and human resources, effective July 1.
Wyrick also added a human-resources manager to the vice chancellor’s office.
Having the finance and human-resources work scattered across the departments led to unnecessary and inefficient duplication, Wyrick said.
“We need all these people, but we didn’t need them all on finance. There were other things they could be working on,” he said.
Reynolds reports both to Wyrick and the university’s Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration Don Pederson.
“That’s an important change in all of this,” Wyrick said. “There is not a day that goes by that Don Pederson or someone from his staff is not in my office talking to me, or Denise, to ensure that we have the proper checks and balances in place.”
DEPARTMENTS MERGED
The restructuring included the merger of two of the division’s departments, Special Events and Constituent Relations. The division’s other departments are the office of the vice chancellor, development, the Arkansas Alumni Association and University Relations.
Wyrick named three new chiefs in the five units that report directly to him. Besides Reynolds, Mark Power replaces Bruce Pontious as associate vice chancellor for University Development, and Melissa Banks was named executive director of the newly merged Donor Relations and Special Events.
Another chief who reports directly to Wyrick, Associate Vice Chancellor for University Relations John Diamond, is one of three finalists for the position of vice president for strategic communications at the University of Iowa, according to the school’s website.
Pontious plans to retire in September, and Kris Macechko, former director of constituent relations, retired June 30.
Under Power, Wyrick promoted two former major-gift development directors, Katy Nelson-Ginder, who is now assistant vice chancellor of development for external relations, and Brenda Brugger, assistant vice chancellor of development for internal operations.
The development department, which is the largest unit of the Advancement Division, handles the university’s fundraising. Development added numerous positions under Choate in preparation for a major fundraising campaign, contributing to the overspending, officials have said.
Wyrick alluded to the fundraising campaign in the release about the restructuring, saying, “the University of Arkansas is embarking on new and ambitious fundraising goals in the coming year, and we are now in a position to do that with the most efficient and productive advancement division possible.”
The reorganization was all about being more efficient and productive, but also about focusing on immediate initiatives rather than future initiatives, he said.
“This was not about promoting anybody that I knew well, or appointing a lieutenant or second lieutenant,” Wyrick said. “This had little to do with a certain individual or person that I worked with.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/18/2013