Fla. Senate president wants in on media circus surrounding FAMU, plans probe

Back in 2007, President James H. Ammons took FAMU’s top job while the university was in the middle of an investigation financed by the Florida Legislature. Lawmakers had given the Florida Board of Governors (BOG) $1M for a Task Force on FAMU Finance and Operational Control Issues. It mainly covered the financial mess created by former Interim President and ex-BOG member Castell V. Bryant, even though her BOG buddies refused to call her out for what she did to FAMU.

Ammons got the finances in order and proved it by getting a clean financial statement audit. The BOG had to admit that financial situation had been corrected and disbanded the task force.

Some members of the legislature now want a piece of the latest media frenzy over FAMU. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, the incoming president of the Florida Senate, says he wants a “joint legislative review” of FAMU.  State Sen. David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs announced that he will start the process with committee hearings about FAMU in the fall. He eventually wants the legislature to create an investigative task force that can subpoena individuals to testify.

"I believe that Florida A&M and its president and its board of trustees owe the students and parents and taxpayers honest answers to the questions that the Sentinel has been asking and that Sen. Simmons is asking," Gaetz told the Orlando Sentinel.

 Simmons wants the task force review to include FAMU’s four-year graduation rate, which is 12 percent. He did not mention anything about Florida Atlantic University’s 15 percent four-year graduation rate or Florida International University’s 19-percent four-year graduation rate.

Gaetz already has reputation for putting political pressure on public university presidents who don’t do what he wants them to do. Back in 2011, he blasted University of South Florida President Judy Genshaft for firing the chancellor of USF Polytechnic. Gaetz supported his buddy J.D. Alexander’s push to make Polytechnic into an independent university and suggested that Genshaft was trying to throw a wrench in their pork-barrel project.