Chief of Staff Jimmy Miller sent trustees a memo on Tuesday, March 15 that
stated Cassidy has been reassigned from CFO/vice-president for finance and administration to the newly created job of chief
external compliance and ethics officer. He said the new position is one that
FAMU might be required to establish under a proposed regulation that's being discussed
by the Florida Board of Governors.
According to the Tallahassee Democrat, “under the new
arrangement, Miller wrote, Cassidy would take over some of Givens'
responsibilities.” The newspaper quoted Miller as writing that this would help
the division by “allowing (Givens) to concentrate more energy on assessing and
strengthening the organization's internal processes and procedures.”
The reassignment is a demotion for Cassidy. His salary has been cut from $195,000 to $177,760 and he will no longer be enrolled in the Executive Pay Plan.
Back on Oct. 21, Givens wrote then BOT Chairman Rufus
Montgomery to report “potential interference with the work of Audit &
Compliance.” Givens was in the middle of looking into questions from the
Florida auditor general about spending on the campus President’s House when he
received an email from Cassidy that led him to send that notice to the BOT.
FAMU is still waiting on the findings of an independent
review of controversial capital improvements at the President’s House and
bonuses that were awarded to members of President Elmira Mangum’s staff. The FAMU
internal auditor normally carries out such investigations. But the BOT voted to
have an outside company do the review after Givens reported the “potential
interference.”
Givens told university trustees last month that Grant
Thornton LLP was selected for the job and would submit its written conclusions
on Feb. 16. But the report still hasn’t been released.
The Democrat reported that Miller’s Monday letter “does not
specify if Cassidy or Givens will be responsible for conducting independent
investigations as Givens has done in the past.”