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Monday, March 30, 2015
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Walters paid when no work scheduled Walters | From Page 1
Job Walters has worked with Baker on addressing NIU issues — falling enrollment, low retention and state funding cuts — since before Baker even officially began as NIU’s president: Walters was on campus by at least late June and Baker officially started work as president on July 1. The two, who worked together during Baker’s time as provost at the University of Idaho, created and implemented NIU’s Bold Futures Workshops. The workshops, held during the 2013-14 academic year, brought together NIU and DeKalb community members to brainstorm ways to transform the campus. Walters also helped in the creation of the Master Plan Thesis, a series of ideas about how NIU can be reinvented to increase campus activity. The thesis proposed planting 2,018 trees to honor the class of 2018, closing Normal Road to vehicles and establishing a more defined quad, among other things. “Well, this was something just done in the spirit of exploring possibilities. This is far from being a plan that we will be implementing; it is simply to recognize that there are a lot of different fronts in which we need to be exploring in ways to provide better student experiences,” Walters said, according to a Feb. 11, 2014, Northern Star article. Walters also reached out to community members. He met with the
Student Association Senate to explain the Master Plan Thesis on Feb. 9, 2014. He scheduled meals with local leaders, including DeKalb and Sycamore mayors John Rey and Ken Mundy, and planned to go sailing with Kenneth and Ellen Chessick, prominent NIU donors, according to FOIA results. FOIA results showed Walters made about 19 trips to DeKalb during his time as an employee. He continued to work while out of DeKalb, but his calendar indicates he went days or weeks at a time without scheduled work while receiving a paycheck every two weeks. In one instance, Walters did not have work scheduled Dec. 12 to Dec. 31, 2014, although he was paid $15,000 on Dec. 31. From Nov. 13 to Dec. 7, 2014, Walters scheduled four NIU appointments, each an hour to an hour and a half long, while being paid $15,000. Baker was not available for comment before press time, but he referred the Northern Star to an Aug. 8 column he wrote for the Daily Chronicle in response to criticism about Walters’ salary. “The challenges we face required me to look outside the organization for highly specialized talent,” Baker wrote. “Attracting individuals like [interim CFO Nancy Suttenfield] to lead the finance division and Ron [Walters] to facilitate strategy development required that we provide a competitive compensation package to them both.”
Freedom of Information Act results
Information from this story was garnered through Freedom of Information Act requests. Go to bit.ly/1yrO5tY or NorthernStar.info/Campus/ to review the results of the FOIA requests used in this story. in that area. NIU now faces potential funding cuts from the state as Gov. Bruce Rauner proposed cutting about a third — or $29.3 million — of NIU’s state funding, which would make NIU’s Fiscal Year 2016 allocation $64 million. Baker said NIU will re-examine spending on capital ... I brought in Ron tempo- projects and travel expenses, among rarily, and his work has met other things, in the wake of prowith a good deal of success posed cuts, according to a Feb. 19 across the university.” Northern Star article.
Results NIU has implemented portions of the Master Plan Thesis Walters helped work on, planting 2,018 trees and deconstructing Douglas Hall so Lucinda Avenue can be extended, among other things.
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Doug Baker NIU president in a letter to the community
The Bold Futures Workshops, which generated 80 reports from faculty, staff and students, brought together nearly 800 community members who talked about ways to revitalize NIU and its relationship with DeKalb. The semester after the workshops — fall 2014 — saw the trend of enrollment falling continue as the student population declined from 21,138 in fall 2013 to 20,611. The decline was the smallest NIU has had in five years, and freshman retention rose from 66 percent to 71 percent. But, NIU also saw declines in freshman enrollment after two years of growth
History Baker and Walters worked together at Idaho, where they “built up a level of trust,” Baker said in the letter he sent to the Northern Star. “I am no different than virtually any other university president or private sector CEO, for that matter, in that I want people on my team who I know and trust and will get the job done,” Baker wrote. “So, I brought in Ron temporarily, and his work has met with a good deal of success across the university.” Walters is a “senior strategist” who has spent more than four decades “building organizations and counseling global enterprises,” Baker wrote. He founded planning project firm Cormac Systems in 1970 and worked
there until 1986, when he became the director of Deloitte, Haskins & Sells, which provides consulting and advisory work, among other things. Walters was the president and CEO of 21st Century Learning Institute, which works to connect parents and communities with children’s education, and he was a principal at Ecotone Partners and NBBJ, an architecture, planning and design firm, among other things. Walters’ work has focused on strategic planning. Information gathering The Northern Star gathered information for this article through several Freedom of Information Act requests, research and interviews. Portions of Walters’ calendar, which was requested in whole by the Northern Star, were not present in NIU’s response to the Star: Sept. 16 to Oct. 6, 2013; Dec. 23, 2013, to Jan. 5, 2014; Feb. 24 to March 8, 2014; and April 13 to 19, 2014. Walters was reimbursed for travel expenses during some of these times, indicating he was working for NIU. Walters was in DeKalb May 31 to June 6, 2014, his calendar indicates, but NIU did not provide a reimbursement form to the Northern Star for this trip. NIU provided reimbursement forms for two trips between June 6 and July 18, but NIU indicated it did not process reimbursement forms for the trips Walters took to and from NIU between July 19 and Dec. 31, when his employment ended.
Companies started work before contracts approved: audit Audit | From Page 1
Walters’ work calendar, which was obtained through a FOIA request, shows he continued commuting from Washington to DeKalb after July. His employment at NIU ended Dec. 31. The Illinois Higher Education Travel Control Board will determine if the employee must pay back a portion or all of the funds he or she was improperly reimbursed. Phillips said NIU hopes to “have this finished up in the next few days.” Contracts NIU was found to have improperly begun work with vendors, or
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companies, before the companies’ contracts were approved, which goes against regulations and can lead to legal issues, according to the report. Fifteen of the 66 contracts tested by auditors were not approved prior to companies beginning work. Phillips said this occurs when, for example, a company is doing consulting work and its employees begin discussions a before their contract with NIU has been “fully approved and signed.” Companies cannot be paid for work done before then, he said. This can leave NIU “vulnerable to ... potential legal problems,” according to the report. Phillips said he has formed a task
NIU contract regulations
“The office of the State Comptroller will refuse to make payment of any contract not signed prior to performance,” according to NIU’s Business and Procedures manual. force that will re-engineer NIU’s procurement and contracting practices. “Obviously, work should not be initiated before the contracts are signed,” Phillips said. “... We’re in the process of addressing that issue to ensure it doesn’t happen in the future.”
compliance with the Fiscal Control and Internal Auditing Act were not returned, according to the report. One of the forms that was returned indicated the department that filled it out was only in partial compliance with one of 25 attributes, and there was no explanation about actions beCompliance ing taken to make corrections. AnThree of 10 evaluation forms other form indicated the department sent to NIU vice presidents to test that filled out the form was only in
partial compliance with 18 of 25 attributes, and there was no information about corrective actions being taken. “Attributes” are items on a checklist auditors use to determine if departments are in accordance with regulations, Phillips said. Phillips said he does not know why forms were not filled out correctly or why follow-up wasn’t done. “... We’ve already started to identify areas where we need to do a better job of managing these kinds of processes and transactions ...,” he said. “We will be doing a process reengineering to ensure that not just these issues but other issues as well are properly addressed.”