Trustees take Mangum to task for supporting shift of $12.9M engineering budget to FSU

Yesterday, members of the FAMU Board of Trustees took President Elmira Mangum to task for her claim that they had given her the flexibility to decide whether FAMU would keep the fiscal agent duties for the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering (COE).

On May 20, 2015, Mangum and the other voting representatives on the Joint College of Engineering Governance Council unanimously passed a resolution to shift the COE fiscal agent duties from FAMU to FSU. FAMU had served as the fiscal agent for the COE for 28 years.

“There was a statement made by a senior administrator that the board supported this decision,” said Vice-Chairman Kelvin Lawson. “You hear from the comments that this isn’t true.”

Lawson’s statement appeared to be in response to a quote by FAMU Vice President for Communications Jimmy Miller that was in the Tallahassee Democrat last week. Miller said the change made with the resolution was consistent with what the FAMU board “authorized” during a February meeting.

“We believe the actions taken by the Governance Council on May 20th are fully consistent with the board of trustees’ action and comments at its February 2015 meeting where the president was authorized to do what is necessary to assure the continuing existence of the joint COE,” Miller said.

Chairman Rufus Montgomery said that wasn’t true and referred trustees to the minutes of the special called meeting of the Board of Trustees that took place on February 6. The minutes of the February 6 meeting show that the only vote that the FAMU board took was one “to go on the record in support of keeping the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering intact.”

“That was not a carte blanche authorization to do whatever the president saw fit,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery also said that the president did not tell him about shift of the nearly $13 million core operating budget of the COE to FSU until ten days after the vote took place.

“She thinks this is a decision that lies under university operations,” Montgomery said.

Trustee Torey Alston expressed concern about the board not being notified about any of the changes that happened at the May 20 meeting until more than ten days after. He said that he received a June 1 press release that said the COE dean position would be rotating to FAMU. But that press release didn’t have any information about the shift of the fiscal agent duties to FSU.

“There was no notification in that release regarding the budget authority,” Alston said. “Was there a discussion about rotating the budget back to FAMU?

Mangum told Alston that: “We did not have a discussion about the reversal of the responsibilities.”

Lawson said that Mangum should have taken the issue to the FAMU board before telling FSU it could become the new fiscal agent.

“The gravity of a $13 million decision deserves a conversation with the board,” Lawson said.

Lawson added that he was worried that the loss of the fiscal agent duties might be part of something bigger that won’t serve the best interests of FAMU.

“If you look at the playing cards, you ultimately see where this is going,” he said.

Back in 2007, Lawson’s brother Sen. Alfred “Al” Lawson led the way in stopping a legislative plan to transfer the COE fiscal agent duties from FAMU to FSU. Interim President Castell V. Bryant had given her support to the plan. But the FAMU Board of Trustees rebuffed her and reaffirmed its policy that FAMU should be fiscal agent for the COE.

Kelvin Lawson said he didn’t buy the claim that moving the COE fiscal agent duties to FSU in 2015 was “an inconsequential decision.”

“If it wasn’t so important, why year after year would various leaders try to move it?” he asked.