The bumbling attack on the super-majority clauses in FAMU President James H. Ammons’ contract has played out like a flashback to the bad old days of the mid-2000s when Bill Jennings and like-minded trustees nearly ran the university into the ground.It all began with a set of highly questionably actions by Jennings last year.
Back at the September 23, 2010 Board of Trustees meeting, then-Chairman Jennings first announced his intent to meet with Ammons and discuss “restructuring” the bonus clause in his employment agreement. But at the recent August 4, 2011 meeting, Jennings confirmed that he had also asked Ammons about changing the “super-majority” clauses.
The super-majority clause require nine votes, rather than a simple majority of seven votes, to terminate the president without cause.
Jennings never mentioned any plans to try and pressure the president into making any contractual changes beyond the bonus clause when he addressed trustees during the September 23, 2010 meeting. Ammons agreed to switch the guaranteed bonus into a performance-based incentive during his talks with Jennings but resisted the former chairman’s efforts to individually strong-arm him into additional changes that had not been discussed before the entire board at a public meeting.
FAMU’s BOT could have an inked an agreement to restructure the bonus clause months ago had it not been for Jennings’ behind-the-scenes power struggle against Ammons.
Over the past two months, Jennings’ battle with the president has suffered big setbacks. His ally Richard Dent failed gain enough support to be a competitive candidate for the chairmanship, which ended any possibility of Jennings retaining his powerful committee-of-one role for renegotiating the presidential contract.
And now, the central argument Jennings and his allies had been using to justify their desire to remove the super-majority clauses has fallen apart.
Back at the August 4, 2011 FAMU BOT meeting, Jennings ally Karl E. White said he wanted an ad hoc committee to work to remove Ammons’ super-majority clause. He justified his position by saying that it was his understanding that Ammons was the only State University System of Florida (SUS) president with such clauses.
White’s “understanding” turning out to be 100 percent wrong. Florida Atlantic University (FAU) President Mary Jane Saunders’ contract requires a super-majority vote for termination with or without cause. Former FAU President Frank Brogan, the current SUS chancellor, also had the same super-majority clauses in his contract with the university.
White still has not explained why his “understanding” was inconsistent with the facts. Did he simply choose to speak without knowing what he was talking about? Or, did he actually know that Ammons is not the only SUS president with super-majority clauses and simply assume no one would not be smart enough to check that information?
The Bill Jennings-led attack on the super-majority clause has gone from being a set of under-the-table actions to a public campaign that has been exposed for its misleading information. FAMUans have every reason to be suspicious of what Jennings and his followers Charles Langston, Richard Dent, and Karl E. White are trying to pull.