Business As Usual At LSU - Part Deux

     This is the second of two columns regarding the exorbitant pay hike for LSU Chancellor Mark Emmert and the related efforts by the Tiger Athletic Foundation (TAF) and the LSU Foundation to supplement his pay with their accrued private funds. While Chancellor Emmert continues to hide silently inside his ivory tower at LSU, far behind his faithful minions on the LSU Board of Supervisors headlined by Charlie Weems, his veracity wanes ever further. That is so because it was learned this past week that the chancellor's pay issue is indeed a zero sum game in terms of opportunity costs within the LSU academic community. As a result of his staggering pay hike, it was recently learned that the LSU Foundation can no longer afford to give LSU professors their supplemental pay endowment monies, all while LSU students continue the campus-wide practice of taking tests from overhead projectors to save on printing costs. These factual developments, in addition to other fact-finding efforts by the Baton Rouge Advocate, help to cast an even longer, darker shadow of doubt on the quiet machinations that have made Mark Emmert the country's richest college administrator.

LSU's Golden Boy

     This story begins 3 years ago when Chancellor Mark Emmert first arrived at LSU.

     Emmert began his work on July 1, 1999. After only a year at LSU Emmer received a substantial pay increase from the Board of Supervisors, along with the new President of the LSU System--William Jenkins. At the time, this move produced a considerable outcry across campus given the amountof funding levels for students and faculty pay. In reaction to this the legislature enacted R.S. 17:3351(a)(10), which was Act 4 of the 2000 2nd Extraordinary Session, to allow the Board of Regents, not the Board of Supervisors, to set salary guidelines. The Regents proceeded diligently in setting forth such guidelines, only to have them eventually usurped in 2002 by the LSU Board of Supervisors. That legislation read:

     "Salary data and guidelines will be based on peer data." "The salary differential for administrative salaries as a group must be equal to or greater than that for the faculty."

     What is even more unthinkable than the LSU Board of Supervisors violating the Regents' policy, is that it violated its own working papers. In its own Policy Statement 20 the LSU Board sets forth the following:

     "Salary...is established based on a comparison of average salaries paid to employees in benchmark or key jobs found in Southern Regional Education Board Schools (SREB)" Furthermore, "The minimum salary value for each title is established at 80% of the pay line and the range maximum is established at 120% of the pay policy line."

     These policy statements notwithstanding, the maximum amount Chancellor Emmert's pay line should be at is 120% of the SREB average; currently Mark Emmert is sitting comfortably at more than 200% of the SREB pay line! Furthermore, Permanent Memoranda 11 of theBoard's working papers clearly restricts the amount of annual compensation. Therefore, LSU not only ignored the Regents' rules, but it also chose to avoid their own stated rules in approving his astronomical pay hike.

     After the Board voted in Emmert's salary, a concerned Student Senate chimed, "The donation of the unregulated private funds may diminish the influence of students, faculty and staff in favor of the donor foundations."

Unregulated Funds

     The TAF is afforded "private legal status" in Louisiana thanks to the passage of a 1992 law. This same law was passed in 1991, but Governor Roemer vetoed it. Governor Edwards, however, signed it a year later. The Baton Rouge Advocate, in September, 2002, commented on the TAF's private legal status:

     "(The) Tiger Athletic Foundation would like to be considered a private, nonprofit corporation, exempt from state laws, rules and regulations governing expenditure of public funds regarding procurement, gifts and bidding. On the other hand, the Foundation wants to receive the benefits of financial resources to which only public agencies are entitled."

     What is even more troubling about the donation by TAF to the chancellor's salary is that it ironically, much like the audacious move by the BOS, violates their Articles of Incorporation that are on file with the Louisiana Secretary of State's Office.

     The specific provisions violated by the TAF are Article II, Section 11 (a) and (b), which read:

     "No part of the net earnings of this corporation (TAF) shall ever inure in whole or in part to the benefit of any private member or any individual."

     In earmarking these funds to the Board of Supervisors for the exclusive benefit of Chancellor Emmert the Tiger Athletic Foundation violated their own rules and guidelines. Also, what is equally troubling is that the TAF solicits donations from around the State of Louisiana with the veiled mission statement to "?promote athletics at LSU." One must wonder how using these funds to pay for a chancellor's pay increase fits into that mission statement related solely to athletics.

Greed, An Intriguing Parallel

     A startling common denominator between the sinister demise of some of our country's larger pseudo-corporations like Enron and Worldcom, and Chancellor Emmert's pay issue, is the fact that the CEOs of those companies were paid on average more than 75% of the average pay for executives of their kind. Interestingly, Mark Emmert is paid over 100% of the average compensation for chancellors of third-tier public institutions like LSU.

Forensic Audit Needed

     Given that the LSU Board of Supervisors and the Tiger Athletic Foundation have violated their own working papers in their clandestine efforts to compensate Mark Emmert for using his office and status to push the football ticket surcharge movement on an unsuspecting and undeserving public, it is time to take a closer look at the books of both the TAF, the Board of Supervisors and most importantly, the LSU Foundation. Quiet machinations notwithstanding, the unreasonable compensation granted to Emmert have had notable impacts to the supplemental pay of faculty members, in addition to taking valuable and much-needed dollars away from the university classroom?where it is sadly most needed. The Legislative Auditor's Office should be charged to conduct a complete, forensic audit of the books of the aforementioned so that any further wrongdoing can be uncovered. Given the many illegalities and the overall related secrecy involving the pay hike, the people of Louisiana need to be reassured that their trust has not been further breached. As previously stated, it is time to clean house at LSU. An administration bent on promoting athletics at the expense of academics is one in need of replacing.