Date: 13 Jan. ‘07
TO: City Council
County Commission
Selected Community Leaders
South Central Kansas Legislative Delegation
Selected Legislators
Board of Regents
FROM: Shocker Black & Golds
Remember the 20 year damage to our university and the miserable failure of the Board of Regents to correct the damage the KU Board of Regents caused in the first instance.
BARE BONES
• The champion Wichita Eagle weeper of 2006, intentionally unreported upon by the Eagle scribblers, is: double taxation of Sedgwick County tax payers uniquely in the state from all other counties; and the related miserable failure of the Board of Regents to provide WSU a single dollar from the State’s Board of Regents Capital Improvement Budget currently, and for the last 42 years.
• Digressing from the fundamental issue, but in any case a fundamental part of the problem, is the failure of the local monopoly news paper to perform its function of proper dissemination of the important news to the community. Has anyone considered the Eagle scribblers’ intentional failure to report news, the double taxation issue? The Eagle scribblers have had knowledge of the issue from multiple sources and on multiple occasions, and chose not to report the issue. They are not a “news paper”, reporting all the important news to the community, fit to be reported. Instead, in my view, the drive-by scribblers employed by the Eagle, are a selective reporting service for all the petrified mind liberal news, and their own biased preference for issues; and even then only their side of the issue. Is there any wonder why the Eagle’s circulation is dissipating.
• The Eagle’s scribblers use the Eagle’s money, printing and distribution apparatus, and circulation; to try to control the community consistent only with their own views; rather than simply reporting the news with all the substantive facts, and letting folks make up their own minds. Instead, they treat the Wichita community with arrogant condescension, consistently exhibiting their lack of quality work product and any attention to the Journalist Code of Ethics with their biased prattle, expecting only that the spoon fed Wichita community believe them, and pay for it. But on to the maintenance issue at hand.
• State universities could have used, and should have thought about deferred maintenance moneys, when they requested $727 million for new construction. Now they want somewhere between $584.5 million, if you believe the president and CEO of the Board of Regents; or $740 million if you believe presidents Beggs, Wefald, and Hemenway; or “upwards of $800 million” as reported the day after the president’s $740 million story was stated on television. Why, pray tell, are we in the process of building $727 million in presently approved projects for new buildings; when we apparently can’t find an extra farthing to maintain our present buildings for decades old “deferred maintenance”, and at a time they are now asking for another “upwards of $800 million” just for deferred maintenance? And isn’t it these same folks that have made these decisions for decades, to defer maintenance, and use the Budget moneys for other more interesting and ego pleasing want-to-does? Why should we now reward them and bail them out, for their admitted past decades old malfeasance and negligence, accomplished on their watch.
• For me, these folks don’t come begging for moneys with clean hands, and straight eyes, with their exhibited lack of exercising proper responsibility for maintenance, and their oversight jurisdiction, in the first instance.
• When these sterling folks were all in a huddle brain storming their battle plan for $727 million in new construction; why didn’t they consider the “upwards of $800 million” in decades old deferred maintenance they knew existed? One would think they had a duty and obligation in their oversight responsibilities, to take care of maintenance first, before requesting and using State moneys for new construction; but no, these folks chose to feed at the public trough for new construction, while using a paltry 1 percent of their budget for maintenance, and then noisily claim to having been ignored and starved, and that it is now their turn at the public trough again. $1.8 billion isn’t enough to find the 4 percent, $72 million they claim they needed, so now they need a “down payment” “in partnership” with the presidents as “good stewards”, of our tax dollars, etc., etc., ad nauseam. Even they admit the 1 percent they allowed for maintenance was not enough, and they should have allowed 4-5 percent, as is normally accomplished by business.
• Even university presidents and chancellors are not immune from reason, notwithstanding their exulted regal appointed positions. It is after all a public position; it is a public responsibility; it is public money; and ultimately they have to be accountable to the public or the public’s representatives; albeit in the past they have easily escaped accountability by the presumed benign innocence of their office and position.
• The 22 December Bare Bones mailer and posting, contained on page 4 the issue of WSU’s December 14th Board of Regents meeting requested Capital Improvements Budget amendment, to increase the Engineering Lab buildings budget from $10,000,000 to $12,058,924. This issue discussion was continued on pages 5 and 6, and, while I identified the issue, I did not emphasize the amount. The difference of $2,058,924 should be emphasized. Please note, that the amount of revenue bonds is not being increased to $12,058,924. Only the budget for the new engineering lab buildings is being increased to $12,058,924. Also note they apparently know the exact cost of the “escalating costs in construction materials” and what ever equipment they intend to purchase, down to the last dollar. Says the request:
“Funding for the increase will be provided from mill levy funds accumulated for such overrun and from existing Sponsored Research Overhead Funds.” (Emphasis added).
From our review of “budget requests” during president Beggs tenure since 1999, we find no mill levy line item for “mill levy funds accumulated for such overrun”. Nor is it stated how much of the $2,058,924 is accumulated from the mill levy, and how much from “Sponsored Research Overhead Funds.” Or, what source of money is sponsoring the “Sponsored Research”. We suspected:
“that in essence, the funding will be by the mill levy”,
and we said:
“Or, in the alternative, he has already “accumulated” the funds from the mill levy, and the City and County just doesn’t know that it has occurred.”
But we do know that existing Sponsored Research Overhead Funds could not be from work yet to be accomplished in the new labs not yet finished.
• Accordingly, how did this money from “mill levy funds accumulated for such overrun” in fact get accomplished? How did it occur apparently without City/County public knowledge? And, precisely how much of the $2,058,924 is in fact “mill levy funds accumulated for such overrun”? When did the City and County knowledgeable know – if even today – they were accumulating mill levy funds for equipment overruns, and for equipment not yet even purchased? And what is the process that can accumulate millions from the mill levy in moneys for equipment overruns? When did this “equipment” become a subject for funding from the mill levy, rather than properly funded from state funds by the Board of Regents, who has a conflict of funding interest, and who accordingly was given no line item authority over the mill levy; which they apparently in any case ignore and execute, I believe ultra vires the Board of Regents’ statutory authority?
• In a $6,644,000 and growing budget, how is it can you “accumulate” moneys perhaps in the multiple millions, without any apparent line item identification or otherwise accounting disclosure to the public officials responsible for the public money? Upon information and belief, the proper procedure for line item carry-overs, is that they are to be added to the subsequent annual budget. But we understand from a previous university official, that the university is loath not to show every farthing from the preceding budget spent; as to show significant carry-overs would imply to the City and County officials that the university doesn’t need as much money the succeeding year, who might then cut the amount of the gift.
• The university may or may not request budgetary uses of public money, but it has a duty to disclose the actual uses of public money. Both the president, and the City Councilmen and County Commissioners are public officials responsible for the public moneys. One would think that somehow the accumulation of a few million of public moneys would be properly timely disclosed and accounted for in the normal course; without claims of thousands of dollars just to find and produce the accounting documents for independent review, upon proper Kansas Open Records Requests; or upon even a singular request by either a City or County official.
• And, the majority of the City Council and County Commission, including Sue Slapp, Carl Brewer, and Paul Gray, had and have a duty as public officials “in partnership” with, and as the representative of their constituents, and as “good stewards” of the public purse, to properly account for the public money. Council woman Sue Slapp’s advice to me and at public council meeting, that she is “comfortable” with what president Beggs tells her, while being unable to explain the amounts and actual uses of mill levy budget line items; it is submitted, does not pass as an acceptable public accounting system.
• Query: who will ever know what some multiple millions was in fact initially accumulated for? After the fact explanations will not suffice. There needs to be up front identification, and knowledgeable agreement by our City Council officials. This system of pseudo or non existent accounting, it is submitted, is clearly defective, does not meet proper accounting procedures, and needs to be changed.
• It would seem to be appropriate to ask the question of whether: when a few months ago these issues of properly accounting for mill levy expenditures initially occurred; there may have existed a large amount of unaccounted for mill levy moneys in perhaps the millions, that university folks knew would likely eventually have to be disclosed if they existed; and that we are now about the process of dissipating those apparently undisclosed account moneys to zero; maybe.
SHOCKER BLACK & GOLDS
By:
Fred Marrs
VISIT: www.Alumnishockerblackandgolds.com
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