SUNY’S failed leadership
Somewhere on the itemized bill State University of New York students get should be a future line item that could well be called the “Jim Malatras Golden Parachute Fee.” Or the “SUNY Trustees Malfeasance Fee.”
That would at least be full disclosure from a board whose refusal to call out Mr. Malatras for his behavior seems likely to cost SUNY, and state taxpayers, millions in years to come.
Mr. Malatras, who stepped down as chancellor last Friday, announced in December he would resign after a series of embarrassing revelations — his role, while he was a SUNY college president, in a deceptive Health Department report on nursing home resident fatalities in the pandemic; his involvement in discussions about ways to discredit a woman who complained about a toxic work environment in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office; and a recording of him berating a woman while he was president of SUNY’S Rockefeller Institute of Government. He finally quit, saying it had all become “a distraction.”
But that’s not the end of the story.
Mr. Malatras — a former top aide to Mr. Cuomo hired in 2020 as chancellor by an obeisant SUNY board without a national search at the administration’s behest — signed a deal earlier this week providing him with $450,000 to take a paid year off, and a lifetime tenured professorship at Empire State College that pays $186,660 (his original contract called for $245,000).
That one-year paid vacation could cover tuition for 63 students. The ongoing annual salary could cover tuition for 26 students, or give six an entirely free college education.
Mr. Malatras might not have qualified for that deal if he had been fired or quit without good reason. The board was said to be looking at whether those conditions might yet have applied, but ultimately, trustees apparently realized they would not.
Little wonder. As far as the board was concerned in its public statements, Mr. Malatras, right to the end, was “outstanding ” and “the right leader” for meeting SUNY’S challenges. When he resigned, the board thanked him for his “extraordinary service,” called him “a champion” and expressed its “gratitude for his dedication and leadership.”
A board that took its duty seriously to oversee SUNY and Mr. Malatras — not just be a cheerleading squad for the chancellor — would have been far more restrained. It would have taken the time to consider the consequences of defending and showering praise on a chancellor who was sliding deeper and deeper into scandal. And it would have been aware of the consequences of its statements on both SUNY’S image and its financial obligations to Mr. Malatras.
We’ve already called on board holdovers from the Cuomo years to resign, and this latest wrinkle in the saga only affirms our view. It was bad enough that the board’s support of Mr. Malatras sent a terrible message to students, faculty, and all New Yorkers about its values and misguided loyalties. It’s all the worse to be stuck with the bill for the board’s malfeasance.