UO paid $2,476,131 in severance to football coaches last year

Lots of interesting budget bucket tidbits in the Federally required EADA report on Duck athletic finances. This was one of their smaller expenditures:

I assume that mostly went to Mark Helfrich, who was fired in Fall 2016 after getting a fat contract from Chuck Lillis and our Board of Trustees the previous year, on the enthusiastic endorsement of AD Rob Mullens and Scott Coltrane, and without any signs of due diligence from our Board of Trustees or their Chair Chuck Lillis. I forget next coach’s name, but he didn’t last long either. The new coach (Cristobal?) has even bigger severance guarantees. President Schill’s new contract also includes some pretty expensive ones.

From a previous post:

In February [2015] the UO Board of Trustees gave big raises to Duck AD Rob Mullens and football coach Mark Helfrich, after a second place finish in last year’s championship. Board Secretary Angela Wilhelms kept the purpose of the meeting secret until the last minute, and even left the contracts off the docket of meeting materials. The board approved them with no discussion, after then Interim President Scott Coltrane enthusiastically endorsed the raises:

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His full porkalicious contract is below the break.

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What sorts of MOUs and dollars have our Deans extracted from the budget?

No one takes the job of Dean without getting some promises from the Provost about money and hiring, in writing. What sort of deals? Let’s find out:

From: Bill Harbaugh <[email protected]>
Subject: Public records request, MOU’s with Deans
Date: April 1, 2020 at 12:43:49 AM PDT
To: Lisa Thornton <[email protected]>
Cc: Provost Patrick Phillips <[email protected]>, Patrick Phillips <[email protected]>

Dear Ms Thornton –

This is a public records request for copies of any MOU’s or similar agreements currently in effect between UO Deans and Colleges (and the Knight Campus) and UO’s central administration, regarding the distribution of University funds, the forgiving of past internal debts, or the allocation of faculty or OA positions.

As an example of the sort of document I am requesting, I attach this 2014 agreement between former Provost Coltrane and former Law Dean Michale Moffitt.

I ask for a fee waiver on the basis of public interest in the expenditure of public funds.

I am ccing Provost Phillips, as his office should have these agreements at hand, and should be able to provide them without your office’s usual fees and delays.

Thanks,

Bill Harbaugh
[email protected]

[pdf-embedder url=”https://uomatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/CAS-AAA-Law-off-budget-transfers.pdf” title=”CAS AAA Law off budget transfers”]

UO Foundation’s Paul Weinhold and Jay Namyet each get $500K+

From the UO Foundation’s IRS 990 form, here:

Where does their pay come from? When you give to UO to support our students, the money goes through the Foundation. They take 5% off the top.

Do they charge Phil Knight the same percentage for the ~$250M Hayward Field? For the $12M Jumbotron? For the 2021 2022 Track & Field Championships? Good questions.

The PAC-12 paid UO $29M last year. The academic bucket got $0

John Canzano has another story about the failure of their Board (consisting of the president’s of the 12 universities) to control the PAC-12’s spending on itself.

[CEO Larry Scott, ~$5M a year] directed Gary Stevenson to negotiate an 11-year lease with Kilroy Realty Corporation to secure two floors and 113,000 square feet of prime office space in downtown San Francisco. The deal cost the conference $6.9 million in rent last year and another $11.7 million in deferred rent.

Here’s what was left over for the universities last year:

And after Duck AD Rob Mullens took his cut of UO’s $29M. there was $0 left over for the university’s academic mission.

Coronavirus restaurant shutdowns interrupt VP for Equity & Inclusion’s attempt to blow excess cash on “Jeffersonian Dinners”

The email invite to a series of dinners on Love, etc.:

From: VP for Equity and Inclusion <[email protected]>
Date: January 17, 2020
Cc: VP for Equity and Inclusion <[email protected]>
Subject: Would you like to have a conversation over dinner?: Response Requested by January 31, 2020

~Message sent on behalf of Vice President Yvette Alex-Assensoh~

Dear [redacted]:

On behalf of the Division of Equity and Inclusion, I am writing to invite you to join me and about 10 other guests at our LACE Dinners, which are one-topic conversations that ignite deep conversation and connection.

LACE Dinners will be held monthly and will focus conversation deeply around the topic of Love in February, Authenticity in March, Courage in April and Empathy in May. Our goal is to convene an intimate group of faculty, staff and students who don’t normally work together.

Since very few of us are able to accept all of the good invitations that come our way, we are asking you to kindly complete the Qualtrics by January 31, 2020 so that you can let us know of your availability and preferences.

Based on your feedback, we will be in touch with next steps.

Thank you most sincerely, and best wishes to you for a wonderful and joy-filled New Year,

Yvette.

Her Authentic, Courageous and Empathic website:

The budget: If redirected, enough to keep ~80 NTTF’s employed, teaching, and fed though probably not in the back room at Marche:

The Ducks have $63M in cash. Will Pres Schill let them keep spending it on their raises and bonuses?

VPFA Jamie Moffitt has noted that UO’s operating reserves are about $60M, for a general fund budget of about $650M. After it’s gone, it’s not clear how UO will meet payroll.

Meanwhile the Ducks are sitting on $63M in their “Legacy Fund”, for an annual budget of about $125M. This was set up at the insistence of the Legislature to ensure that they had enough money to pay off the $230M in Arena bonds. (The academic budget pays about $450K a year to help them out). Phil Knight has donated about $145M to this so far, and the Ducks have used it as a slush fund, raiding it whenever they want more money to pay themselves higher salaries or bigger bonuses.

The most recent report is here, and the gist is below:

Board of Trustees to authorize $12M for UO’s emergency coronavirus response

Just kidding, they’re going to authorize $12M for the biggest big screen in big time college football, apparently paid for by tax-deductible Duck donations solicited by AD Rob Mullens, while VP for academic development Mike Andreassen was asleep at the wheel.

Not what the legislature had in mind when they passed SB 270 and gave UO it’s own independent board, and not likely to lead them to increase tax funding for UO’s academic budget next cycle:

 

Years of work by lobbyists Bernard and Batlan to pay off with $20M?

Unfortunately that would be $20M more in funding for the 2021 Track and Feld Championships, not for UO’s academic bucket.

HB 2047 passed the Oregon House by one vote, and goes to the Senate tomorrow. OLIS link here. It seems Hans Bernard and Libby Batlan were being paid out of the academic budget, but working for something or someone else:

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Law school to raise tuition 7% – and not pay back UO debt or $10M subsidy

Dean Marcilyn Burke will ask the Board of Trustees for a 7% increase – but it’s a shell game. She will keep the money for the law school’s own budget, including more fee remissions. So actual cost will barely change, and after scholarships law students will still pay only ~50% of the listed tuition (on average). In contrast UO only has funding to give undergrads discounts of about 10%. From the Tuition Fee Advisory Board here:

A rough estimate of the current law school subsidy is $10M per year. The latest available data is 2017-18, at https://ir.uoregon.edu/files/Operational_Metrics_LAW_01092018.pdf They spent $13.2M on personnel costs. Figure another 20% for mics, you get about $16M. Add in overhead to JH, IT, Facilities etc, and you’re at at least $20M. They brought in maybe $7M from law student tuition after the discounts, and they taught another 4800 credits to undergrads at about $220 per, averaging in and out-of-state tuition. Let’s call it a total of $8M in tuition revenue versus costs of about $20M. Through in a few offsets from donations and you get $10M in subsidies.

Why are UO’s undergrads paying $10M to subsidize law students and professors? This subsidy helps the law school recruit better students, and is crucial to keeping their US News ranking high. Cutting this subsidy would of course leave the rest of UO with more money – which it could use to improve it’s over all US news ranking. But apparently that’s not important to our administration.

The huge increase in law school scholarships started with this deal cut back in 2014 between then Law School Dean Michael Moffitt, his spouse and VP for Finance and Administration Jamie Moffitt, and VP Brad Shelton: