“For clarity purposes, before the creation of this joint
committee, did A&M have control of the budget?” Warren asked.
“My opinion would be that the dean controlled the
expenditures of the College of Engineering; FAMU kept account of them,” Mangum
said.
Trustee Kelvin Lawson, a FAMU alumnus, disagreed and said
that FAMU had the “responsibility for managing the budget” in the past. He added
that the management responsibility wasn’t limited to executing “joint
decisions.”
Back in 2007, Lawson’s brother Sen. Alfred “Al” Lawson led
the way in stopping a legislative plan to move the COE fiscal agent duties
from FAMU to FSU. Then-FSU President T.K. Wetherell said the plan would have
let FSU make the management choices for the budget.
“We’re just going to manage the money,” Wetherell said in a
quote published by the Tallahassee Democrat in 2007.
The Tallahassee Democrat article added that: “Asked why
lawmakers were making the change if it wouldn’t be noticed, Wetherell
hesitated, then said: ‘Who would you rather have manage your money?’”
FAMU alumnus Larry O. Rivers, who wrote a history of the
FAMU law school, wrote about the COE issue in an opinion piece for the
Tallahassee Democrat on Sunday. He wrote that: “As the direct recipient of the
college’s appropriation, FAMU had fiduciary responsibility for budgeting. The [Board
of Regents’] records show that after the Joint Council approved the dean’s
budget request, it become part of the FAMU spending plan that FAMU’s president
submitted to the board. If the regents wanted adjustments, they held FAMU – not
the Joint Council – accountable for making them. If budget cuts were needed
later, then FAMU – working under regents’ policies – implemented them in
consultation with the dean, just as it would for any of its other colleges.”
Former FAMU President Frederick S. Humphries, a FAMU alumnus,
signed the 1987 agreement that gave FAMU the budget control for the COE. He
told Diverse Issues in Higher Education that FAMU leaders should “fight with every
fiber of [their] being to put things back the way they were” with that original agreement. He also wrote on his Facebook page that “I welcome questions from the
masses on why Fiscal Agent status is far more than a clearing house for paying
bills.”
According to a WCTV-6 story on the COE fiscal agent shift, “administrators
say this puts FSU in charge of implementing decisions of the FAMU-FSU College
of Engineering Governance Council...FSU says the move does not give FSU more influence than
FAMU, as some fear the change suggests. Administrators say all decisions will
made by the council.”
The Joint College of Engineering Governance Council is
formed in a way that could let FSU and the Board of Governors (BOG) chancellor
simply vote together in order to make sure that FSU gets its way on all the big
budget decisions. The BOG chancellor is the tie-breaking vote on the Joint College
of Engineering Governance Council.