Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 18, 1994 TAG: 9408180101
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The reimbursement is "very minor," and may technically not be owed under broad guidelines allowing use of the fund, Wampler said.
The audit into Dedmon's discretionary fund has lasted all summer and came in the wake of faculty-led allegations of its misuse. Dedmon, who has been ill, announced his retirement the same day in June that the board launched the audit.
At the same time, the board discovered that a "whistle-blower" audit had been conducted by the state in March 1993. Dedmon had repaid more than $2,800 stemming from expenditures going back to 1989.
The current audit covers expenses from 1986 to 1989.
Of greater concern than any money Dedmon may owe are the very broad guidelines governing use of the fund, Wampler said. Budgeted at $30,000 this year, filled with earnings from campus vending machines, the fund is used to pay for everything from dinners for the board to "general furnishings and accessories for the office and home provided the president."
Wampler said he will ask the board to review and possibly rewrite the guidelines Aug. 30, when it reviews the full audit report.
"They're out of date," Wampler said. "They're perfectly legal, so to speak, but they're just too broad. We need to define them more [so] in the future there will not be any question - no question of the new president, auditor, or board.
"We'll discuss the findings, and what, if any, actions need to be taken. I hope that'll wrap it up."
He declined further comment.
Tom Mullis, chairman of the faculty and one of three professors who gave the board 500 documents purporting to show misuse, declined comment until the report is issued.
Despite any sums still owed, Al Pearson said he remained concerned that a "coverup" of the 1993 audit had taken place. Pearson, the professor who obtained the documents turned over to the board, said he hoped the board's review defended the school's academic and administrative integrity.
Discretionary funds fall into a gray financial area. State internal auditor John Huston called them "a bridge" between state funding laws and the needs of colleges and universities.
Radford is one of the largest of the state's public colleges and universities that still funds discretionary accounts out of public money, said the state auditor of public accounts.
"Most people don't have their funds audited anymore, because they don't have the money under a public entity," said Walter Kucharski, the state auditor. "They put them in foundations."
Kucharski told the story of a $10,000 to $15,000 discretionary charge from another university that accidentally made it to his office. A university secretary had failed to send it to the proper funding source, the private school foundation.
The president had spent the money on a two- to three-day trip to San Francisco, where he stayed in the fanciest hotel in town.
"He came back with pledges for $15 million," Kucharski said. "Was it money well spent?
"That's what those discretionary funds are for."
But they also come up for scrutiny, as Radford University has discovered. Wampler said the Aug. 30 meeting will go on as long as necessary.
"I don't want to cut it short and make it look like we're hiding anything. We've got to open it up. If people want to get into it document by document, we'll be there six hours."
by CNB