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5/31/2009:

Greg Bolt has an article in the RG on overcomittment problems at UO. He mentions Edward Kame’enui’s $400,000 from Reading First, but not the $200,000 of UO money Melinda Grier spent lobbying the congressional committee (one invoice here) to get that investigation closed. Or so the timeline suggests. Charles Martinez comes in for special attention: he refuses to answer questions, but Provost Bean says he’s doing a heckuva job as Diversity VP, and it’s fine for him to ignore the 1 in 7 day rule, not run his grants through UO, have two jobs, and pull in over $250,000 – these rules aren’t for administrators! OSLC’s latest 990 form came out 5/15, but they’ve been ignoring our requests for it. As usual with Greg’s articles, you wish he would follow up on the quotes: “Really, Provost Bean – you think it is appropriate for one of your VPs to have a 29 hour per week job on the side? Would you offer the same deal to a professor?”

In fairness to Provost Bean he inherited Martinez from Provost Moseley, who had to hire a diversity VP on the quick, after he lost a discrimination lawsuit. So quick that UO didn’t even do an affirmative action compliant search. Rumor is that Bean and Lariviere intend to replace Martinez soon, hence all Bean’s effusive praise. One of the biggest problems with UO’s current administrators is they can never admit to the smallest mistake or tolerate any criticism. I’d think it would be hard accomplishing anything productive in an office where no one ever tells anyone the truth, but they really seem to enjoy it that way.

But probably the biggest conflict of interest at UO is Frohnmayer’s. Oregon law seems pretty clear:

… a public official … may not solicit or receive, directly or indirectly, any gift or gifts with an aggregate value in excess of $50 from any single source that could reasonably be known to have a legislative or administrative interest in any governmental agency in which the public official holds … any authority. (ORS244)

But half of Frohmayer’ pay from comes big time donors like Phil Knight, who certainly has a large interest in the UO President’s decisions. Phil apparently sends another $1 million or so a year to the Fanconi Foundation – except when Dave misbehaves. That’s a serious and very sad conflict of interest, in every sense.