This has been a bad year for various bureaucrats and the boards that are supposed to provide oversight of their responsibilities and activities in Lexington. The bureaucrats at the airport, UK, and the Lexington Library – sometimes, it seems, with collusion by their respective boards – have been caught with their hands in the taxpayer-till. Some have paid with their jobs and face possible criminal prosecution, while others should be fired.
The peccadilloes of these officials and/or their boards, however, pale into insignificance when compared to the stark incompetence in the UK Department of Athletics, the result being the loss of millions of dollars that could have been pumped into the university’s coffers. The airport director/thief, was paid nearly a quarter-million-a-year, way too much when considering the scope of his responsibilities. The airport board took good care of him…even joined in on some of his “activities” at taxpayer expense – or at least some of its members did. Three of his minions, with their relatively high six-figure salaries, paid, like him, with their jobs. They deserve jail, so blatant were the scope and size of their embezzlements.
Mitch Barnhart, UK athletic director makes way more than a half-million-a-year for doing what any smart CPA could do. For outlandish salaries, check out what basketball coach Calipari makes – a cool $4 million. The football coach is also a millionaire. Check out the assistants. While many professors make do on virtually a month-to-month basis, assistant coaches are in the well-over-$200,000 range. That’s penultimate waste.
But that kind of waste is nothing compared to the waste brought about by Barnhart this year in his firing of basketball coach Gillispie. According to the “memorandum of agreement,” the obvious substitute for a signed contract, Gillispie is entitled to a – GET THIS – $6 MILLION buyout. This is six million big ones that could have been pumped into the university’s general fund. The red herring that the athletic department is separate from the university’s financial setup – therefore in no way to be touched by UK – doesn’t wash. It’s been touched before when a UK president has demanded and gotten money – at least a million dollars on one occasion.
If the airport director should have been fired for perfidy – and he was – how much more so should Barnhart be fired for sheer incompetence? Wasting – absolutely throwing down the drain – $6 million is unconscionable…intolerable. But, of course, Barnhart has a sweet contract or contract extension, so he could sue, and rest assured, he would.
This kind of waste is nothing new in the athletic department. Just a few years ago, UK paid football coach Hal Mumme a cool million to quit and threw in two cars (at least for a year, if memory serves) as part of the severance. A few years before that, UK paid football coach Bill Curry $600,000 to quit and he went off to a goldmine in the sky at ESPN, laughing all the way to the bank.
Put it all together and the result is that these three firings represent $7,600,000 that could have been used toward reducing tuition, raising the salaries of the people who actually do the educating, fashioning scholarships, etc. It’s no good to mention that separation thing. The athletic department HAS $6 million to give to Gillispie, or can easily get its hands on it if it hasn’t already; otherwise, that firing wouldn’t have taken place. Indeed, it wouldn’t have taken place if UK had just won a few more games.
The bureaucrats and the boards, whether connected to the airport or the library should be held accountable…but not the athletic director, who lost at least six times more than all the others in making that one gesture. He’s a disgrace, but most likely he will get his usual bonus at the end of the fiscal year. Anyone who can pull off a mistake of that magnitude deserves something for being smart and in-your-face enough to get away with it.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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