Now that Bill Jennings is experiencing embarrassing setbacks in his power struggle against the FAMU president, two individuals who helped him protect Castell V. Bryant for years are lending him some back-up.Former FAMU General Counsel Elizabeth McBride and former Trustee W. George Allen are following Jennings’ lead by publicly voicing their personal bitterness about President James H. Ammons’ employment agreement.
Tensions have been high between Jennings and Ammons for more than a year. As Rattler Nation previously reported, it appears that Jennings’ ego got bruised because he was seemingly receiving the lame duck treatment as he headed toward the end of his final term as Board of Trustees chairman and continues toward the end of his appointment (January 6, 2013).
Jennings’ attack on the super-majority clause in Ammons’ contract suffered a big setback weeks ago when trustees discovered that Jennings’ ally Karl E. White had his facts wrong on the issue. Back at the August 4, 2011 board meeting, White said it was his understanding that Ammons was the only State University of System of Florida (SUS) president whose contract requires a super-majority vote for termination. But the board's Ad Hoc Committee found that there are other SUS presidents who have the same types of super-majority clauses, including Florida Atlantic University President Mary Jane Saunders.
McBride and Allen are now jumping into the Jennings-led contractual fight.
McBride was general counsel at FAMU from 2004 to 2007. During her tenure, FAMU coughed up well over a hundred thousand dollars in wrongful termination case settlement costs. She recently told the Chronicle of Higher Education about her “heated” talks with Ammons’ attorney back when his contract was being negotiated in 2007. According to the Chronicle, “she advised the university's trustees against the ‘evergreen’ provision.”
It is not hard to see why McBride is probably carrying sour grapes from 2007. Ammons decided against asking her to stay at FAMU and appointed a new general counsel on his first day in office.
Allen also took his own shots against the Ammons contract in the Chronicle by saying that it was too generous because Ammons’ supporters “would've given anything” to him.
Allen might not want the public to be reminded about his own generosity to Castell. On December 1, 2005, Allen made the motion to give Castell a $35,000 bonus. Then on March 2, 2006, Jennings made the formal request for trustees to grant Castell a $50,000 raise. The pay increase took Castell’s total salary up to $300,000.
The $35,000 bonus and raise $50,000 raise, totaling $85,000, were primarily based on Castell’s claim that she created an $8M surplus in 2004-2005 and straightened out the financial books.
Both of those claims turned out to be completely false. State auditors found that Castell really created a $10.4M deficit. The books were in such bad shape that FAMU received its first ever qualified state audit in 2004-2005. That was followed by another qualified audit in 2005-2006. Castell’s 2006 operational audit was worst in FAMU history with 35 findings.
Neither Allen nor Jennings asked the Board of Trustees to revisit Castell’s bonus or raise despite all those problems. They did not state any concern about whether FAMU could afford to let her keep that money despite the big dollars FAMU lost from declining enrollment and wrongful termination case settlement costs during the Castell years.
Jennings, Allen, and McBride cannot say they are seriously dedicated to issues of executive accountability at FAMU when they all played big roles in letting Castell off the hook.