Trustees Get Chance For Deficit Review

Later this week, the University of Arkansas board of trustees will oftcially take up the long-running saga of overspending on the UA’s Fayetteville campus.

How that oversight board addresses the issue will go a long way toward resolving — or reviving — the debate that has hung over the campus for more than a year.

The matter, involving an unplanned multi-million-dollar deficit in the Division of University Advancement, is on the board’s agenda for a meeting in Little Rock on Thursday and Friday.

We’ll see then how the trustees tackle the state audit report that has since been the subject of a prosecutor’s inquiry and two high-profi le legislative hearings.

Prosecutors in Washington County found no missing funds and no evidence of a crime within this jurisdiction.

Still undetermined is how a Pulaski County prosecutor may view potential perjury in his jurisdiction during sworn testimony by some UA oft cials.

Nor is it clear what further action may come from state lawmakers either directly or indirectly regarding the $4.2 million defi cit that has been attributed to bad accounting and management in the fundraising arm of the UA.

The Legislative Joint Auditing Committee accepted the audit at a controversial December meeting cut short when lawmakers didn’t hear key witnesses waiting to testify. Brad Choate, former vice chancellor for advancement, and Joy Sharp, the budget director, were both reassigned then let go over the deficit, which developed after the division hired about 20 staff members without money budgeted to pay them.

Neither got to testify at that first hearing. Nor did John Diamond, the former UA spokesman who recently filed a federal complaint that his firing violated his civil rights.

All three all got their chance to talk early this month before a second legislative panel, the Joint Performance Review Committee. However, much of what they would have said in December had already been revealed through news reports, so what they had to say had less impact at the January meeting than did an exchange between a state senator and David Gearhart, the chancellor of the UA in Fayetteville.

Sen. Keith Ingram, D-West Memphis, ticked off a number of the issues revealed in the audit and through subsequent inquiries.

“The one constant in this, I guess, has been you, chancellor,” asserted Ingram, who asked Gearhart point blank if he believed he had the public’s confi dence to continue to lead the institution.

Gearhart answered without hesitation.

“Yes, sir, I do.” And the chancellor challenged some of the assertions that preceded Ingram’s question.

Since the start of all of this, the question constantly asked behind the scenes is whether Gearhart, who has been a popular chancellor, could survive the controversy. It did develop on his watch, in a division he previously headed that was under the supervision of a man Gearhart brought to campus.

Importantly, the university administration has made changes in accounting practices intended to avoid any repeat of what Gearhart has admitted is “an embarrassment” to the institution.

Again, prosecutors found no fraud, no criminal wrongdoing, no missing money. So the primary problem was with the way the campus accounted for and used funds it received. Another huge problem has been the way the UA responded to requests for information about the whole matter and assertions relevant documents were destroyed, an accusation not proven by investigators.

It is unlikely that the UA Board of Trustees, which has worked with Gearhart since he came to campus, would choose not to trust him to continue to lead.

The 10-member board is, however, responsible not just for the Fayetteville institution but also the rest of the UA System and needs to be wary about how it handles any lingering questions about this defi cit and all that surrounds it.

Gearhart is convinced the public has suft cient confi - dence in his leadership, as are many others.

The trustees may believe the same; but they need the public’s confi dence, too, something that can’t be assured if they don’t work through this phase of the inquiry thoroughly and publicly.

Public boards represent the people out here who pay taxes. These trustees are the public’s eyes on how the UA uses the money it is entrusted to spend.

The last thing that should happen is for this board to be seen as representing the administration it oversees more than it does the public’s interest.

Now, those interests may indeed be the same. The best way to persuade a skeptical public, however, is through a lot more openness than the UA has sometimes shown.

BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE

COLUMNIST AND LONGTIME

JOURNALIST IN NORTHWEST

ARKANSAS.

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