FAMU President Elmira Mangum helped FSU President John Thrasher put an end to the 28 years of FAMU budget control of the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering (COE) in 2015. She did that despite the existing legislative budget language that favored FAMU and the Florida Board of Governors (BOG) study that said nothing about shifting the money from the university.
Last year, with Mangum's approval, the legislature moved the $12.9M for the COE from the FAMU line to a new budget entity called “FAMU/FSU
College of Engineering.”
Following the transfer, a new Joint College of Engineering Governance Council was created and it started calling the shots on the operating budget. This has made it
possible for the FSU representatives and BOG Chancellor
Marshall Criser, III to now out vote FAMU on budget decisions.
At a July 21, 2015 FAMU Board of Trustees (BOT) committee meeting, Mangum tried to downplay the seriousness of the loss of the $12.9M COE budget by claiming that FAMU didn’t have control over that money during the years that those operating dollars were at the university. But Trustee Kelvin Lawson disagreed because he actually understands what happened. He 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.”
At a July 21, 2015 FAMU Board of Trustees (BOT) committee meeting, Mangum tried to downplay the seriousness of the loss of the $12.9M COE budget by claiming that FAMU didn’t have control over that money during the years that those operating dollars were at the university. But Trustee Kelvin Lawson disagreed because he actually understands what happened. He 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.”
“I think it’s also important to have the perspective to have
that there’s a lot more involved in the responsibility of the fiscal agent
other than just managing the money and making joint decisions, because if it
wasn’t so important, why would year after year after year, various leaders make
an attempt to move the responsibility from its original home?” Lawson said.
At the October 18, 2015 BOT meeting, Lawson pointed out that the COE budget shift was a problem that Mangum needed to work to fix.
“I would like to see us make an active pitch to regain
budget authority for the College of Engineering,” Lawson said at the meeting.
“I would ask that the administration take that as a ‘To Do’
moving forward,” he added.
Mangum hasn’t reported any progress in addressing the COE
budget shift problem since that time.
Lawson isn’t letting the issue go. He raised the COE
budget shift in Mangum’s 2015-2016 evaluation.
“The decision on the Joint Engineering School was a major
decision that had no Board engagement; this discussion will have fall-out for
years to come,” he wrote.