Posted on 04/18/2006 12:26:37 PM PDT by TexasCajun
TSU board votes to ax Slade over spending
Hearing likely for president before her firing becomes official.
Priscilla Slade's seven-year tenure as Texas Southern University's president headed to an end Monday when the historically black institution's governing board decided to fire her on the grounds that she misspent school funds.
Slade's contract guarantees the right to a public hearing within the next month before the firing becomes final, and she plans to request one. Slade, meanwhile, will be on paid leave.
"There is always in everybody's life a day of reckoning," Slade told supporters at a nearby church afterward. "There is a day when you're going to have to decide whether you're going to stand up or you're going to sit down ... What I will do is stand up."
With one regent dissenting, the board concluded that Slade, who made more than $340,000 in cash compensation last year, should be dismissed "for cause" and therefore not receive severance.
The decision comes more than two months after the regents began investigating Slade's use of university money to furnish and landscape her newly constructed house near Memorial Park.
The board's inquiry, conducted by the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, found that Slade and former chief financial officer Quintin Wiggins failed to follow university and state purchasing policies and laws, including "long-accepted principles prohibiting the use of public money for private gain."
The Harris County District Attorney's Office also is investigating Slade's spending habits. Prosecutors intend to subpoena the Bracewell & Giuliani report, but an indictment is unlikely before the current grand jury's term concludes at the end of the month.
Slade left the building where the regents met without comment.
But she and her attorneys have said that virtually all of the spending was appropriate. After the vote, Slade's attorney, Ron Franklin, asked the regents to keep an open mind for the expected hearing.
"I'm confident if you do, and I can present the full and complete story, you will change your position," he said.
Asked if he could see any reason to reverse his vote, Regent David Diaz said, "I doubt it."
Tensions with the board began in January after Slade settled into a $1 million-plus, Spanish-style house at the corner of Memorial and Terrace drives. She moved from Missouri City to a neighborhood of million-dollar homes to be closer to TSU and "to provide an appropriate environment" to entertain donors, according to Bracewell & Giuliani's report.
Slade billed TSU for $86,467 in home furnishings, $138,159 in landscaping services and $56,010 in security-related equipment. After regents questioned the expenses, she reimbursed the university for the landscaping bill, which includes a security gate and tree removal.
The Bracewell & Giuliani report concluded that Slade authorized the landscaping work without first knowing how she would pay for it. That Slade did not ask for the regents' prior approval created an appearance that she initially intended for the university to cover the costs, the lawyers' report said.
Slade has said she always planned to pay part of the landscaping and that TSU employees mistakenly paid all of it.
Wiggins told investigators that he did not know TSU paid for the landscaping work at Slade's house, the report said. But two TSU staff members contradicted his statement, saying he told them that university would take care of the bill.
Lawyers found other problems with the handling of Slade's expenses. For example, Wiggins signed two checks — one for $23,504 and the other for $22,819 — on the same day to Noel Furniture. The university's threshold for competitive bidding is $25,000, but Wiggins denies dividing the furniture invoice into two purchase orders to get around the rules, the report said.
While standing in Noel's showroom, Slade called Wiggins and asked for a $175,000 budget for furniture, the report said. He created one from a funding source typically used for capital construction projects and credited the purchase to his office, not hers.
Wiggins, whose criminal record includes nine convictions for writing worthless checks, resigned under duress last month.
Slade is expected to entertain donors in her home and receives $48,000 annually for housing expenses. But Bracewell & Giulani found that she has hosted seven events, and not all of them for donors, at her home during her tenure.
While lawyers pored over Slade's expenses, those with ties to TSU have tried to reconcile her apparent lapse of judgment with an otherwise praiseworthy tenure.
Slade has presided over a period of unprecedented growth at the 11,600-student university, imposing a five-point vision on what many had seen as a financially troubled institution. Enrollment has nearly doubled, and she has beautified the campus, with several renovations and new buildings.
Before the regents hired Slade in 1999, TSU had gone through three presidents in six years. Her supporters said she has brought stability, while convincing donors, lawmakers and prospective students that the school is on the rise.
Even then, Slade has taken her fair share of criticism. Faculty salaries have improved but still lag behind their colleagues nationally, and TSU has one of the lowest graduation rates in the country.
Before the regents moved behind closed doors to discuss Slade's future at the university, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee told them, "Let us not be known as the university that topples people."
Jackson Lee later told a gathering of about 50 people at nearby Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church that the regents should have given Slade a chance to explain her spending in an informal setting before launching a full-scale investigation.
Slade's supporters have suggested that the regents effectively allowed the president to conduct business without much oversight. After two alumni criticized the board's vote Monday, some regents received police escorts to their cars.
"This institution is larger than the president," board Chairman J. Paul Johnson said. "This institution had educated a great number of individuals, and it will continue to do so."
Regent Earnest Gibson, who cast the only vote in support of Slade, described the president as talented and brilliant and worthy of a second chance.
"She made mistakes," he said, "but we all do."
Some said the time has come for Slade to leave.
"Her effectiveness has eroded," said Sanders Anderson, president of the faculty council, "and we need to move on."
Chris Le Blanc, president of the alumni association, praised Slade's accomplishments, but voiced doubts about her ability to continue the momentum she helped create.
"There has been so much damage done," he said.
That's pretty good wages if you can get em.
You know I watched this with much interest. I wanted to see how far her flagrant fraud and theft by deception would be soft peddled to the public. This woman is decidedly arrogant to think she could smile and wave away theft of hundreds of thousands. Oops, company check paid it. Oops my ass.
Can't we all just get along?
she's taken the impervious OJ shield to new heights. You really got the impression she was the victim in all this if you listened to her. Smooth hustler this one. Did she even have a college degree. I know the Houston city mayor pro tem faked her high school degree. Government sure cherry picks the best to waste our money.
(Is that a Rockets Championship t-shirt? ...the memories)
Nice perk. The entertainment expenses are fully deductible to boot. I do not know where to come down on this one. If the board approved this, and caught the furniture expenses in a timely fashion, no harm no foul. If they find a pattern of misappropriation, can her and file a criminal complaint.
More shocking than anything that the president has been accused of is the fact that the university's Chief Financial Officer, Quntin Wiggins has a "criminal record [that] includes nine convictions for writing worthless checks."!!
The article mentiones he resigned under duress last month, but why would such a person possibly have been hired?
"TSU board votes to ax Slade"
What did they ax her, and how did she answer? ;-)
They're going to ax her lots of questions at the hearing before they axe her for good.
She knew exactly how she was going to pay for it. She was going to bill the university for it. And the university was going to get reimbursed with some free government money so it was all good. She was just trying to get over. One day at a time, baby.
LOL!
Coffee spew on aisle six ....
Something to remember before you donate to The United Negro College Fund.""
This has always bothered me.
Why is there ONLY a "United Negro College Fund"???
In today's PC world, why is there either NO UNCF, or why not a United WHITE College Fund, Hispanic College Fund, ETC.
I think this is totally discriminatory and I think it has been since it's inception.
A mind IS a terrible thing to waste....regardless of the color of the bearer.
Something to remember before you donate to The United Negro College Fund.""
This has always bothered me.
Why is there ONLY a "United Negro College Fund"???
In today's PC world, why is there either NO UNCF, or why not a United WHITE College Fund, Hispanic College Fund, ETC.
I think this is totally discriminatory and I think it has been since it's inception.
A mind IS a terrible thing to waste....regardless of the color of the bearer.
You can say that again!
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