More info on what is looking like a Central Florida shake up that will affect
the Florida Republican's power tree.
The first is a commentary by Scott Maxwell. It's a paywall, so you'll have to subscribe to the Orlando Sentinel to get the full story. But here's a teaser:
Another Week, Another Scandal
This time, it’s at the Florida Virtual School, where Orlando attorney — and political power broker — Frank Kruppenbacher resigned as general counsel in August after the school launched an investigation into his behavior toward women and his use of the state agency’s resources and money.
The school-ordered investigation into Kruppenbacher — a GOP fundraiser who also serves as Gov. Rick Scott’s appointee on the Orlando International Airport governing board — raised lots of questions.
Oddly, though, the board that runs the school — also appointees of the governor — doesn’t seem very interested in getting answers.
The board of trustees hasn’t even ordered a new financial audit — even though the board’s own investigative report says that’s the only way they would likely get the full story.
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It goes on to say that the Florida Virtual school is funded with 170 million of government funds.
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Second article in today's Orlando Sentinel involves the ex-president of UCF, Hitt as well as the findings of an audit.
There's going to be an investigation on money he received for the year that he was emeritus, but the article also points out to other purposes of the UCF audit. The one that caught my eye was the last paragraph. I don't know if it's the same with other universities, but I do think that many organizations tied with universities are just money funnels for cronies. I see the same thing in local government when you have a good ole boy city attorney looking the other way, instead of paying close attention to issues that could prove troublesome for the city. For example, there are boards that get set up that have disposable funds, and without any real oversight, it's not surprising that the money ends up serving as petty cash for the cronies. The one that comes to mind is a board or committee in Apopka that was in charge of selecting the entertainment for a city function. For years they were allowed to divert the funds to their cronies and it was later determined that the process was unfair and improper. But only after the long-term city attorney left and a newly elected black commissioner began to make inquiries.
Here's the clip from the Hitt article:
Ex-UCF leader’s salary flagged
Other preliminary findings of the audit include:
• The university’s failure to post required and recommended textbooks for at least 95 percent of all courses and sections, as it is required to do by state laws intended to make materials more affordable. The auditor’s office found that for the fall 2016 semester, textbooks for 32 percent of courses and sections weren’t posted on time and the same was true for 19 percent of courses for the spring 2017 semester. Binette wrote in an email the university has been compliant with this law since the spring 2018 and continues to improve this area.
• Problems with monitoring services and payments to legal services and a firm hired to lead the search for Hitt’s successor.
• UCF’s inability to produce records detailing agreements between the university and several directsupport organizations, which are nonprofit organizations operated exclusively to support the university. This included a missing agreement for the University of Central Florida Foundation’s use of university personnel at a cost of $13.8 million. The foundation reimbursed the university for about $1.5 million related to these costs.
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So creepy. We had an issue with a critical missing document in the history of my city.
= new reply since forum marked as read
