UCF official resigns amid allegations about gifts
A high-level University of Central Florida administrator resigned after an internal investigation found he solicited and accepted gifts from vendors — including clothing, meals and tickets to an Orlando City Soccer Club match — and told his employees to do the same.
It wasn’t the first time Associate Vice President of University Relations Curt Sawyer, who was paid $195,988 annually, had violated the state ethics code for public employees, UCF documents show. Sawyer’s supervisor, Chief Financial Officer Bill Merck, rebuked him in 2014 for similar abuses, describing the accusations against him as “very troubling” and requiring him to attend training in ethical leadership.
Though Sawyer was told in 2014 he couldn’t take gifts
from current or prospective vendors, he continued to do so, the university’s ethics office found. He resigned March 19, less than a week after Merck received a report from Rhonda Bishop, the university’s chief compliance and ethics officer, that said Sawyer had an “ongoing unwillingness to comply” with the state ethics code, the Sentinel learned recently. He is not facing criminal charges.
In an email to the Orlando Sentinel, Sawyer, who worked for UCF since 2007, said the university told him he could resign or fight the charges in a hearing. After reading the investigative report, Sawyer said he decided the rift between him and his supervisor was irreparable.
“Integrity and a good name are extraordinarily important to me, far more than a job, and the report makes me out to be a callous rule-breaker,” he wrote. “That is not the case.”
Much of the university’s investigation centered around a 2016 conference for state university administers that Sawyer organized and attended. He and his staff solicited meals and entertainment for conference attendees from vendors, including Aramark, Coca-Cola and Staples, which were negotiating contracts with the university at the time — a process that Sawyer was overseeing. All of them provided gifts or services to conference attendees, including a “spirit tasting and tapas dinner,” margarita gift sets, Blue Man Group tickets and padfolios.
Sawyer told the Sentinel the university paid for the Blue Man tickets and padfolios, but the investigative report said there’s no evidence of that.
Instead, the report said, the gifts violated the state ethics code. Sawyer wrote in an email to the Sentinel they were not for personal gain but to support the conference.
“I thought I had a clear understanding with my supervisor as to how the university’s business partners supported the conference, but apparently I was mistaken,” he wrote.
During the interview with investigators, Sawyer acknowledged he also had allowed vendors to pay for meals and happy hours, a jacket and tickets to an Orlando City Soccer Club match for him and his family, records show.
Late last year, a judge sided with a vendor that argued the bidding process, under Sawyer’s direction, had been skewed toward a competitor. For a decade, Centerplate sold concessions and alcohol at venues such as Spectrum Stadium and CFE Arena, generating $2.1 million in in 2016, according to records from the state Division of Administrative Hearings.
But last summer, the university decided to award the contract to a different vendor, Spectra. Centerplate said university employees, including Sawyer, met privately with Spectra and showed an “affinity” for its competitor. The judge’s decision in favor of Centerplate, Bishop wrote, “demonstrates the risk associated with Mr. Sawyer’s continued disregard for the state’s ethics laws.”
The university’s investigation also found that Sawyer, who volunteers at his church, used his university computer and email to conduct church business during work hours. In his interview with the university’s ethics office, Sawyer said he works more than 40 hours each week and he sometimes responded to timesensitive church-related issues while at work.
In the earlier investigation, Sawyer was found to have accepted free tickets to Cirque du Soleil and Disney Live events as well as for Hank Williams Jr. and Darius Rucker concerts at CFE Arena. He also used university vehicles for personal use, including a detour to Fort Myers on the way home from a conference in Miami, the 2014 probe determined. Additionally, other employees complained his management style lent itself to a “culture of fear and intimidation.”
UCF Associate Vice President of University Relations Curt Sawyer was paid $195,988 annually.