Scandal Rocks Alabama’s 2-Year-College System

It seemed that the Alabama Fire College’s troubles had petered out. A federal investigation of former Gov. Don E. Siegelman’s financial dealings with the college had resulted in a raid of several of its offices in the summer of 2004. But for two years nobody connected with the institution had been charged with any crime.

Then last April The Birmingham News fanned controversy at the two-year Tuscaloosa college with a series of front-page articles outlining questionable spending there. Next came the allegations of nepotism against the then-chancellor of Alabama’s two-year-college system, Roy W. Johnson. And then, just as the State Board of Education was beginning an investigation, the newspaper leveled charges of nepotism against half of the board’s own members.

The board fired Mr. Johnson in July, citing the charges of nepotism against him and doubts about his ability to lead the system while it was the focus of state and federal investigations. The scandal, however, continued to spread over the fall. So far two people, including a former state legislator, have pleaded guilty to theft and money laundering in connection with the Alabama Fire College’s private foundation. Thirteen people have been charged with theft at Bishop State Community College, and state auditors have reached the conclusion that more than $290,000 in federal financial aid at the college was misused or stolen.

The News investigation set in ink what had been an open secret for years: The two-year-college system there is too cozy with state legislators, many of whom hold jobs within it or have close relatives in such positions.

While nobody is denying that the system has some serious problems, state leaders and college officials cannot seem to agree on just how pervasive those problems are, or how to fix them.

Some, including many members of the state board, say the wrongdoing within the system, while egregious, is simply a case of a few people gone astray. They argue that once those offenders are weeded out, only a few policy changes, like the new anti-nepotism rules adopted by the board in January, are needed to set things right.

Others, like Thomas E. Corts, who was named as interim chancellor after Mr. Johnson was removed, have called for fundamental changes in the system and its governance structure. They say that is the only way to improve oversight and prevent fraud in the future.

Mr. Corts’s assertions that the Board of Education could not adequately govern the state’s two-year colleges angered several of the board’s members, and at least one of them called for his job. He resigned in late February as the public criticism of him mounted.

The debate over the future of the system, which educates more than 100,000 students every year, rages on just as the state’s leaders are looking to the system to lure new businesses and spur economic growth.

“This situation is just really unfortunate,” says Stephanie W. Bell, a Republican member of the state board who is among its strongest proponents of change. “Right now is just such a crucial time in the development of our state.”

Regional Dilemmas

Bishop State Community College was hoping to be seen as an engine of economic development, not as a place where money disappears.

The college’s four campuses are spread across Mobile, which the German steel company Thyssen-Krupp has named as a finalist for a $2.9-billion factory. The Mobile region is eager to land the steel factory and to attract other businesses. A recent survey of officials in Mobile and the towns in the surrounding county found that, of all the issues related to economic development, their desire for high-quality worker training was second only to their concerns about infrastructure.

Against that backdrop, Bishop State has been accused of misusing $438,000 in federal financial aid and sports-program money, resulting in the arrests of 13 people so far. A state audit also found grading and registration irregularities at the college. In one case, an instructor racked up 23 credit hours by enrolling in courses he was teaching.

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools has put the institution on probation, and the U.S. Education Department has limited its ability to collect financial aid — a looming problem because about 80 percent of the college’s 6,700 students receive federal grants.

“It’s beyond me that I’ve apparently got a thief problem in the financial-aid office and that people are stealing the future of students,” says John M. Tyson Jr., Mobile County district attorney. “The situation is threatening the viability of the college. If they lose financial-aid eligibility, the college would collapse.”

The college’s president, Yvonne Kennedy, a Democratic state representative, remains in office. She did not return calls for comment. Though she has not been accused of any wrongdoing, several board members have said Ms. Kennedy should be fired for allowing the alleged fraud to occur on her watch.

Part of the problem, Ms. Bell, of the state education board, says, is that one person can’t be at a campus in Mobile and at the State House in Montgomery at the same time.

Design Flaws?

Betty Peters has a theory about how the state’s colleges ended up mired in allegations of nepotism, political cronyism, and financial fraud. “Maybe it was designed to function that way to begin with,” the Republican board member says. “Ever heard of the late, great George Wallace?”

The same year Alabama’s infamous governor took his stand in the schoolhouse door, he took a lesser-known stand in the Alabama Legislature. During the 1963 legislative session, George C. Wallace Jr. broke a 107-hour filibuster in the State Senate and pushed through a bill to start a two-year-college system.

Mr. Wallace was motivated in part by his populist ideals, but the new college system also presented a mechanism through which he could reward supporters and curry favor with others, says Stephen G. Katsinas, a professor of higher-education administration at the University of Alabama who has studied the founding of the system. No sooner had the legislation passed than Mr. Wallace began filling the colleges’ leadership posts with his friends and political allies.

His ability to interfere in colleges’ affairs was made possible by the new college system’s lack of local boards of trustees and its centralized control by the state education board, which the governor leads. The state education department runs the college system, along with the public schools.

Many states had similar structures in the past. But over the last 20 years, most states have separated community colleges from public schools, creating independent governing boards for their two-year colleges or moving them into a unified higher-education system.

Aims C. McGuinness Jr., a senior associate at the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, a nonprofit consulting group, says the best-run state colleges have a centralized governing or coordinating board separate from both the public schools and the universities. As examples, he points to South Carolina’s State Board for Technical and Comprehensive Education, Virginia’s State Board for Community Colleges, and Washington’s State Board for Community and Technical Colleges.

But there is little interest in moving to such a model in Alabama, many observers say, because doing so would wrest power from the state education board and college presidents who have significant freedom under the current arrangement. The Legislature is also not inclined to change the governance structure, because it allows lawmakers to support pet projects, like buildings named after them, without local interference.

“Certainly separate boards for two-year colleges make sense, but in Alabama such a proposal quickly runs up against political barriers,” says Mr. McGuinness. “And anyone who proposes it risks political ramifications.”

Out With the New

At a meeting of the Birmingham Kiwanis Club last month, Mr. Corts did suggest that Alabama needs a separate board to govern its two-year colleges. The state education board has “way too much on its plate,” he said, and cannot give proper attention to governing the two-year-college system.

When his comments appeared in The Birmingham News the next day, several members of the education board were outraged. They argued that a separate college board was unnecessary and that Mr. Corts had overstepped his bounds. A few, notably the Democrat Ella B. Bell, began openly questioning the chancellor’s ability to lead and suggesting that he should be fired.

A week after the Kiwanis meeting, Mr. Corts resigned. His letter of resignation was a terse three sentences, sent to Gov. Bob Riley.

“You have great plans and desires for our state,” he wrote, “and I sincerely hope that the colleges and entities of the Department of Postsecondary Education may be helpful in their accomplishment of those goals. I respect your high standards and have appreciated the opportunity to work with you and your staff during these months.”

Mr. Corts has been publicly silent on the matter since, and declined to comment for this article.

Randy McKinney, a Republican and the education board’s president pro tempore, said Mr. Corts “was convinced to come out of retirement to take the job, and I think it’s been an unenjoyable experience for him and his family.”

Stephanie Bell, for one, worries others will find the job equally unappealing. Finding candidates from outside the college system and the state will be especially difficult, she says. That, of course, assumes the board is interested in a national search.

Two weeks ago, when the board met to find a new interim chancellor, they chose between two candidates: Renee D. Culverhouse, president of Gadsden State Community College, and Don Edwards, a lawyer whom Mr. Corts had hired to help him clean up the system. Governor Riley, who was not at the meeting, preferred Mr. Edwards, but the Democrats favored the Gadsden State president, who had served briefly as interim chancellor before Mr. Corts took over.

Ms. Culverhouse won out in a 5-to-3 vote, with three Republicans voting against her appointment.

Ms. Culverhouse did not respond to calls for comment. The last time she was chosen as interim chancellor, however, she issued a statement acknowledging that she has several family members who work in the college system, including her husband, daughter, son-in-law, and brother.

http://chronicle.com Section: Government & Politics Volume 53, Issue 28, Page A28