FAMU Trustees Deal With an Array of Problems

By Lloyd Dunkelberger
Ledger Tallahassee Bureau
TALLAHASSEE -- Forty-one employees have been fired because of payroll discrepancies. The school will lose its golf, swimming and tennis programs. Administrators must find $1.4 million to settle a dispute over a federal grant.The NCAA should announce within a month or two a long list of violations involving the school's football program.Those were some of the issues the Board of Trustees for Florida A&M University discussed Thursday, as leaders of the historically black university try to deal with a wide array of problems confronting the 118-yearold institution.But the news wasn't all bad. Interim President Castell Bryant, who learned the school was overspending its budget when she took over in January, also announced the university has balanced its nearly $400 million annual budget. She also the school was improving the accountability and efficiency of its programs.The trustees also agreed to begin their search for a permanent president with the creation of a search committee that will be announced in September. The last president, Fred Gainous, was fired last year."This has been a challenging time, a very demanding time," said Bryant, who has said she doesn't want to be a candidate for the permanent presidency. "I feel that we have come a long way on the road that we need to travel."Trustee Al Cardenas said while decisions like firing employees or eliminating sports programs are difficult, they are necessary to help the school in the long run."The pain lasts a lot less if you make the tough decisions up front," he said. He predicted FAMU, which serves 13,000 students, would "emerge as a healthy, vibrant institution sooner rather than later."But the scope and difficulty of the problems that school officials are dealing with were illustrated by the results of an ongoing payroll audit that Bryant ordered shortly after she became president.Based on an investigation of an April payroll, Bryant said 41 employees had been fired, including some 27 members of the school's Institute for Urban Policy and Commerce.Among the reasons for the firings was that some employees were being paid for work on the FAMU campus but actually lived in other cities or states and had other jobs.Some employees were collecting two checks from FAMU but were not showing up for their additional jobs or were leaving their primary jobs early to go to their secondary jobs.Altogether, Bryant said the audit revealed 286 employees were being paid for multiple jobs. She said some were legitimately being paid for multiple jobs, while the validity of other arrangements was still being investigated.Three incidents involving $323,000, have been turned over to the state attorney's office for investigation. Another 21 employees have been referred to the school's inspector general's office for more investigation.And mysteriously, 74 checks or electronic vouchers involving more than $3 million were never picked up or cashed. Those cases have been referred to the state Department of Financial Services for further investigation, Bryant said.Bryant said the payroll audit was continuing and she expected more results to be announced later.Meanwhile, as part of the effort to balance the school's budget, the trustees unanimously agreed to eliminate the men's and women's swimming and diving programs and the men's golf and tennis programs. It will save about $640,000, but will impact about 40 students who participate in those programs.Several trustees said they were uneasy with the decision."People of color are woefully underrepresented in these areas," said Trustee R.B. Holmes. "I'm very, very uncomfortable with cutting these four sports -- it literally gives me the hiccups."Golf coach Marvin Green said he understood the school had to "make a tough decision for financial reasons." He said six golfers would be impacted by the decision.But he also said it was important for a school like FAMU to have a golf program to help produce more minority golfers."The only way African-American golf is going to grow at the professional level is through the historically black colleges and universities," he said.The trustees and Bryant said they would look to other sources, including private fund raising, to try to revive the programs. In another budget adjustment, Bryant announced that the athletic budget would only pay to send the school's famed "Marching 100" band to two football games this season in Orlando and Atlanta. She said if the band travels to other games, the expenses will have to come out of another budget.The trustees were also told they could expect to hear from the NCAA in the next month or two about alleged multiple rules violations in the school's football program. Last month, the school fired longtime coach Billy Joe.Mark Walker, Joe's lawyer, asked the trustees to discuss the grounds of his firing to avoid a lawsuit. But school officials said Joe had been kept apprised of the investigation as it went forward to the NCAA.Bryant told the trustees that the school was working on an improvement plan for handling grant money from the National Science Foundation.In a related issue, she said FAMU has agreed to pay back $1.4 million of a previous NSF grant that could not be properly accounted for. Bryant said she wasn't sure where the school would get the money to reimburse the agency.