Is resignation enough?
UCF president offered to step down ‘to end punitive measures and threats’
nksFormer UCF President Dale Whittaker hoped his offer to resign would end “punitive measures and threats” from lawmakers and the state university system, but it’s unclear whether his departure will satisfy state officials who are furious that the school misappropriated money for years.
The $85 million intended for operating expenses that school leaders spent, or planned to spend, on construction, has been the subject of investigations from the Legislature and the Board of Governors, which oversees the state’s universities. Many employees, students, alumni and others close to the University of Central Florida believe Whittaker, a popular leader whose tenure as president began July 1, took the fall for others’ mistakes. Others say he was complicit in a years-long strategy to misspend state money and minimized his role in the scandal while others were scapegoated.
The controversy has amounted to a major setback for a university that has been on a roll. Freshman admission has become increasingly competitive. A new campus in downtown Orlando is planned to open in August. And the Knights football team has boosted the school’s national profile, going on a 25-game winning streak over two years and playing in topflight bowl games.
Whittaker said resigning was the “most significant step” he could take toward rebuilding the university’s relationship with Tallahassee and spelled out what’s at stake. He
several projects and initiatives that have been put on hold since the misallocation of money came to light, including the new College of Nursing building at the medical school campus in Lake Nona, permission to spend university money to renovate the Engineering I building and the creation of a $40 million scholarship fund.
State Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando, cautioned against punitive measures.
“I’m not sure when this bloodthirst for UCF from the Legislature will end,” said Smith, a UCF graduate and member of the House Higher Education Appropriations subcommittee. “Tallahassee’s attitude toward UCF doesn’t make any sense. It’s reckless, it’s irresponsible.”
Trustees who voted to accept Whittaker’s resignation Thursday said they did so reluctantly, hinting at political pressure to sever ties with Whittaker. But Alan Levine, a member of the Board of Governors who urged trustees to be more vigilant in September, after university officials acknowledged budgeting $38 million in leftover operating expenses to build Trevor Colbourn Hall, said he’s not aware of any pressure to remove Whittaker. Levine said he was surprised by Whittaker’s offer and “taken aback” by his letter to trustees asking for “punitive” measures to end.
“Any assertion by anyone that the Governor, Board of Governors or Legislature are singling out UCF, or acting punitively, is a diversion from the fact that we have laws, rules and regulations, and UCF violated them,” Levine wrote in an email to the Orlando Sentinel. “Our expectation has been and continues to be, that each university have procedures to independently investigate allegations of misspending or fiduciary mismanagement of public funds.”
As a member of the Board of Governors, he wrote, “my responsibility is to provide oversight and call it as I see it. In this case, there were serious lapses in oversight at the governance and administrative level.”
But Central Florida lawmakers who responded Friday to queries from the Sentinel said they are worried about UCF being hit with additional sanctions, including funding cuts.
State Sen. David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs, said Friday he didn’t want “innocent” university students, employees and alumni to be penalized.
“I believe that the mistakes that may have been made in the past by any particular person at UCF must be kept in perspective,” said Simmons, who is on the edulisted cation committee and appropriations subcommittee on education. “That perspective includes the tremendous asset that UCF is to Central Florida and the entire state of Florida.”
Asked whether she thought the Legislature might cut into UCF’s funding as a result of the misspending, state Rep. Joy Goff-Marcil said she “personally would not want that to happen.”
“I am a big supporter of public universities, and I believe we should continue funding them,” said Goff-Marcil, D-Maitland.
State Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat, said the business community needs to speak out in support of the university, which produces thousands of graduates who fill jobs in local companies. Despite Whittaker’s resignation, Eskamani said she fears more punishment could be on the way.
“I’m concerned that it’s not over yet,” Eskamani said. “I’m concerned about the entire university system … and I want to make sure no university faces any kind of punitive measurement based on actions of one university.”
Such concerns revolve around university funding, which the Senate and the House have clashed over the last few years. Senate GOP leaders have pushed for millions in more spending. Former Senate President Joe Negron the last two years pushed through a bill that put more money into Bright Futures scholarships but also added funding to recruit elite faculty and bring in more research dollars to enhance the schools’ national standing.
In 2015, Negron’s predecessor, Andy Gardiner, secured funding for the UCF downtown campus. House leaders, by contrast, have groused that universities get too much money already. During hearings over the UCF spending scandal, they noted universities had $1.1 billion in reserves at the end of the last fiscal year.
But House Speaker Jose Oliva and his predecessor, Richard Corcoran, now the state education commissioner, agreed to new funding for universities in the past to get the Senate to go along with the Schools of Hope and Hope Scholarship programs to turn around troubled schools and allow bullied students to attend private schools.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, through his press office, didn’t answer questions, but a spokeswoman pointed to prior statements earlier in the week he made at an appearance in The Villages. In his proposed budget, funding for universities remains largely level.
“I think the Legislature was right to be proactive and protect the taxpayer,” DeSantis told The News Service of Florida. “I’m proud of our system and I look forward to making sure UCF gets back on track with some of the issues they’ve had.”
The focus should be on ensuring another misstep doesn’t occur, said Seminole County Commissioner Lee Constantine, a Republican former legislator who served on educations appropriations committees for more than a decade. Any reduction or punitive measure toward the university would have far-reaching effects on area businesses who rely on UCF to provide graduates.
“This university is an economic engine in its own right,” Constantine said. “This university is as important economically to this community, I would dare say, as Disney.”
The Board of Governors, which approves statefunded university projects, has supported most of UCF’s requests during the past five years, Levine said. To move forward, he said, the university needs to take ownership for investigating how the funding mistake happened. He said his future actions will depend on how the university handles the crisis, saying he doesn’t “make blind assurances about anything.”
“To be perfectly clear, we are not the ones who broke the rules,” Levine wrote. “We are the ones holding those who broke the rules accountable.”