Posted on 08/14/2003 8:30:31 AM PDT by Theodore R.
Audit shows Shumaker lived it up while UT paid the bill By Duncan Mansfield, The Associated Press August 14, 2003
KNOXVILLE - Former University of Tennessee president John Shumaker tipped well, traveled extensively and lived lavishly, according to an internal audit released Wednesday.
It listed such expenditures as $6,000 for a flight to Greece, more than $165,000 for tailgate parties, and nearly $500,000 for furnishings and improvements to his residence.
"I think people will be mad about it and I think that anger is appropriate," Gov. Phil Bredesen, who is chairman of the UT Board of Trustees, said at a press conference in Nashville.
"At a time when you're asking students to bear increases in their tuition, when we have departments in state government that are laying people off . . . to be doing this kind of stuff, I don't think it was good judgment and it's the kind of thing that has cost Dr. Shumaker his job."
Shumaker resigned Friday amid growing scrutiny of his spending habits and ethical lapses after a little more than a year on the job as the highest paid president in UT's history, with a salary package of more than $730,000 a year.
UT trustees are expected to select an interim president at an Aug. 21 meeting.
The 51-page audit, which was requested by Shumaker and took 13 auditors 2,500 hours to complete, confirmed media reports suggesting Shumaker was spending big while the university was facing a budget crunch.
"I do not believe he felt the level of investments as he would view them - the expenditures - were inappropriate," UT spokesman Tom Ballard said of Shumaker's misguided efforts to build support for the 42,000-student university. "It is a different view."
Trustee Steve Ennis of Tullahoma, chairman of the trustees' finance committee, said that based on the audit he would have recommended Shumaker step down if he hadn't already done so.
"I can assure you that all of our members of the board take this report very seriously," Ennis said. "We recognize that these activities took place on our watch (and) . . . we apologize to all Tennesseans."
The audit said Shumaker billed the university for thousands of dollars in personal travel expenses, including a $6,000 airline ticket to Greece, and frequently stayed in upgraded hotel rooms.
He ordered $493,137 in additions and furnishings for the UT president's official residence, a mansion in tony Sequoyah Hills, less than a year after it underwent a $787,597 renovation.
Among the additions were three home entertainment systems, a $30,116 telephone system, a $7,000 Persian rug and a $4,800 outdoor grill. (A $169 grill provided by the university "was not acceptable.")
"At a time when I feel a need to convince a lot of people in our state of the importance of higher education and the need to invest in it, $7,000 Persian rugs don't help one bit," the governor said.
Shumaker's need for more closet space led to a $97,350 sunroom and closet addition at the residence. Shumaker said he was having to "store his clothes in several closets throughout the house."
Sometimes the expenditures circumvented state review requirements by dividing the projects into smaller parts.
The audit said Shumaker displayed his largesse early. The moving company that brought Shumaker's belongings from the University of Louisville said he asked it to include a 20 percent gratuity to its nearly $14,000 bill, an allegation he later denied. The movers refused, saying they hoped to work for the university again.
Shumaker later hired the company to move items from his home in Arizona to Knoxville, and sent the $6,291 bill to UT. As in several other cases, the auditors said Shumaker should reimburse the university.
Shumaker paid back $34,747.51 in personal expenses before he resigned. The auditors concluded he actually paid too much and deserved a $2,861 refund.
More than $23,000 in personal expenses were travel related, much of it for trips in the UT plane, sometimes alone or on commercial airliners to Birmingham, where friend and former Louisville colleague Carol Garrison is president of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Shumaker, whose divorce from Lucy Shumaker was recently completed in Louisville, has described his relationship with Garrison as "unassailable, perfectly proper and appropriate . . . (and) nothing to apologize for."
Shumaker spent heavily on entertainment in support of the university. He told the auditors more than 2,700 people attended events in the president's residence during his tenure.
Maybe Shumaker will also recieve a cool $1,000,000 in severence, plus a $240,000/year pension.
Oh no; everybody loves a common thief.
The one silver lining in all the expenditures is that all the money spent on the house STAYS with the house. Choomaker can't take any of that with him.
Michael
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