EDITORIAL: Defending Alleged Fraud With a “No Comment” is An Insult to Faculty, the Public & Legislators

THE HEADLINE IN The Michigan Daily says it all: “University won’t take action at this time on faculty letter to Regents.” By not taking action, U-M officials are, of course, choosing to continue with a multi-million dollar bonus and supplemental pay scheme for upper-level administrators. In this instance, inaction is the worst possible course of action U-M’s president and its Board of Regents could have chosen. Spokesman Rick Fitzgerald’s excuse that officials refuse to respond because, “it’s still unclear where some data about bonuses in the report originated,” is patently absurd at best and a veiled threat, at worst, aimed at whistle blowers who tipped faculty to the existence of the secret pay game.

We believe U-M officials owe the college’s full-time faculty a prompt and complete response; officials also owe an explanation to 1,500 non-tenured lecturers. There are full-time lecturers with Ph.D.s paid less than parking lot attendants who staff booths at various facilities on campus. The unionized employees who paint the classrooms earn tens of thousands of dollars more than the non-tenured lecturers who teach in those classrooms.

While it was revealed that upper-level administrators enjoy annual mid-six figure salary supplements, incentives and bonuses, the contract between the lecturers and U-M calls for Ann Arbor Lecturers to receive annual percentage raises: 0 percent in 2013, 1.5 percent in 2014, 2 percent in 2015, 2 percent in 2016, and 2.75 percent in 2017.

In 2013 U-M upper-level administrators enjoyed millions in salary supplements, added duty overtime and pay for services unrelated to job title, among other clever compensatory categories. The additional pay was coded using innocuous “earnings codes” such as SAL (salary supplement) and UNS (services unrelated to job title).

Not only have the University of Michigan faculty accused the president and many of her upper-level administrators of stuffing millions of public dollars into their own pockets in secret, the faculty have leveled accusations of fraud, in their letter. The tenured faculty ask that U-M regents: “Conduct an independent audit to review the following additional pay categories: SAL, ADM, UNS, ADD, INB, and INQ. The audit should establish if any of these additional pay categories have been applied improperly.” The letter exposes those administrators who have been the “promulgators of the excessive salary and bonus program and who deserve the greatest credit for it.” They are President Coleman, former provost Hanlon, current EVP Tim Slottow, and a few of the deans.

It is a serious allegation to make that a public employee who did not deserve pay for service unrelated to her/his job title, for instance, may have received hundreds of thousands of dollars fraudulently. It is this allegation of fraud, made to the public, which demands an answer not only from the Board of Regents, but from Michigan’s legislators, as well, starting with those in charge of the Michigan House and Senate Education Committees.

We believe there is not only a pressing need for U-M officials to launch an investigation of the secret pay scheme, but also for an outside audit of pay awarded to administrators under the auspices of the various pay categories uncovered by the faculty group.