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The University of Louisville president is going to have a harder time explaining all the school's budget problems against the backdrop of what appears to be some unwise spending habits. But at least he's vowing to make changes to increase transparency at the Foundation.
According to a Herald-Leader story by Ryan Alessi, the U of L Foundation, a non-profit for which James Ramsey serves as president, awarded a $200,000 no-bid contract to Creative Alliance last summer for its "It's Happening Here" campaign.
It's bad enough to be awarding huge contracts without competitive bidding, but the CEO of Creative, Debbie Scoppechio, sits on the U of L Trustees Board.
According to Alessi's story, the award was made by Mary Griffith, U of L's senior associate vice president for advancement, using what it called a "less formal approach" i.e. she got to award the contracts to whoever she wanted to without oversight, and could ignore the existence of other firms qualified to do the work. All of which, surprisingly enough, is legal.
Ramsey is now calling the episode a "mistake" and promised to institute competitive bidding on future contracts, even though it's not required by law. He said the Foundation will put in stronger controls at its March board meeting.
Last summer, after a lengthy legal battle with the Courier-Journal, the university released the names of donors to the U of L Foundation, which took in $156 million in donations from 2004 through 2009, according to a C-J story. The school had argued that its Foundation wasn't subject to open records laws and had refused to release donor names, including those who gave to U of L's McConnell Center, the target of the C-J request.
By vowing to go beyond what the law requires, it could indicate that Ramsey is now willing to make the Foundation's actions more transparent to the public. He should.
But the H-L report also revealed a pattern of questionable spending by the Foundation last year. The newspaper turned up $2.67 million in spending on consultants, lobbyists, lawyers and advertising and public relations firms.
It includes $771,000 paid to Peritus Public Relations, and it paid another $11,000 to partner Bob Gunnell for lobbying trips to Washington, D.C. The P.R. contract was last bid in 2002, and rolls over every three years, according to university spokesman Mark Hebert.
Over the weekend, the Courier-Journal reported that the school had just fired an in-house lobbyist, Alicia Sells, though it inexplicably placed her on paid leave until June and agreed to hire her firm for more work after that.
The Foundation spent $300,759 on consultants, almost a third of which ($96,000) went to attorney Ed Glasscock to help market U of L Research projects.
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Rick Redding