While Janet Napolitano made very little of her tenure as Director of the Department of Homeland Security under former President Obama, it’s clear that she is destined for major scandal.
Discovered just this week is a major malfeasance and misconduct investigation into the office of the President of the University of California, which oversees the budgetary decisions of 10 California campuses, including the recently-embattled UC Berkeley.
UC employees and state lawmakers, concerned over the riots and other anti-First Amendment activities going on at Berkeley, decided to take their questions to the state auditor. This turned out to be an investigation that revealed very disturbing trends of misappropriation of public funding.
What follows is a list of the preliminary charges against the office made by State Auditor Elaine Howle:
- Over the course of 4 years, UC’s central bureaucracy amassed more than $175M in reserve funds by spending significantly less than it budgeted for and asking for increases in future funding based on its previous years’ over-estimated budgets rather than its actual expenditures. [T]he undisclosed funds included $32 million collected from campuses that could have been spent for other purposes.
- 10 executives in the office were paid a total of $3.7 million in the 2014-15 fiscal year — over $700,000 more than the combined salaries of their highest paid state employee counterparts.
- [A] top staff member in Napolitano’s office improperly screened confidential surveys that were sent to each campus. Answers that were critical of Napolitano’s office were deleted or changed before being sent to auditors.
- From 2012 to 2016 the office looked to raise more funding by inflating estimates.
- Napolitano herself overcharged the system’s 10 campuses to fund its operations, paid its employees significantly more than state employees and interfered in the auditing process.
Fox News further expounded:
“I’ve never had a situation like that in my 17 years as state auditor,” Howle said. “My attorneys are looking at whether any improper government activities occurred.”
The UC Board of Regents is now hearing calls to overturn its decision to increase tuition this fall by 2.5 percent.
Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat and member of the UC Board of Regents, said the audit calls into question the university’s decision to raise this fall’s tuition for the first time in six years when it has money available. The decision in January increases the cost of tuition and fees for California residents, who currently pay $12,294 a year, to $12,630.
“It is outrageous and unjust to force tuition hikes on students while the UC hides secret funds, and I call for the tuition decision to come back before the Board of Regents for reconsideration and reversal,” he said.
Even the unions are outraged over the discovery:
“Today we learned that after squandering millions of public dollars on bloated management and unaccountable ‘initiatives,’ (the Office of the President) has effectively been operating a slush fund that shields hundreds of millions of public dollars from public scrutiny,” Kathryn Lybarger, president of UC’s largest employee union, said in a statement.
In her defense, Napolitano excuses the charges with indifference, stating that the $175M is really a mere $38M (oh, only 38 million) and that much of the budgetary funds went to other “activities”:
Napolitano denied the audit’s claim. She reportedly said the money was held for any unexpected expenses.
Her office also denied the amount in the fund. “The true amount is $38 million, which is roughly 10 percent of (the office’s) operating and administrative budget, a prudent and reasonable amount for unexpected expenses such as cybersecurity threat response and emerging issues like increased support for undocumented students and efforts to prevent sexual violence and sexual harassment,” her office said in a statement.
The rabbit hole apparently goes very deep and one wonders if a certain ex-president is at the bottom directing the warren.
Source: Fox News
Image: KCRW
They are all crooks
I’m sick of these people getting away with everything!