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By Steve Wilson
Web Produced by Jenny DiDomenico
April 29, 2004

An Action News investigation has uncovered more serious questions about financial management at Eastern Michigan University. You’ll recall our chief investigative reporter Steve Wilson showed us how university officials just built a new home for the school’s president at a cost of between $5 and 6 million, and now Steve has learned other top school administrators have been quietly cashing in at the same time the university faces serious budget woes.

Leah Mills is building a new career in real estate now to make a better life for herself and two small children after EMU cut short her six-year stint as a clerk on campus.

"They dismissed me on the basis of the state budget. They stated that there were budget cuts that the university was going to encounter and that basically my job was going to be eliminated," Leah says.

Her job, which she held for six years, was helping students in the school’s Academic Advising Center, and as evidenced by a letter officials wrote her just before they took her job, there was no problem with her job performance.

"Your commitment to the customer service group over the past couple of years shows your determination to improve customer service and it has certainly paid off," it reads.

So was she told she was out simply because the school had to save some money?

"Exactly," she says.

But while eliminating 84 jobs, laying off mostly maintenance workers, clerks and graduate assistants, and raising student tuition and fees? Our investigation confirms that school administrators themselves were quietly getting pay raises of up to 28%. Nearly three dozen of them got pay hikes of more than 10%, and four got more than 20%. At the lower end, 2% raises were common but virtually everybody in the school administration got a share of more than $700,000 while officials were publicly lamenting the university’s dire financial situation.

"And so, in my mind’s eye, I couldn’t understand why there were having their jobs eliminated but yet and still the directors were all untouched and some even being promoted," Leah told us.

Mills says she made $26,118 at the job. And, she adds, school administrators took raises which added up to $26,000.

So how much did they save? According to Leah, $118.

And when she started snooping around, she was astounded to discover what the university did with the money it said it needed to save by eliminating her paycheck.

"Patricia Williams, which was my previous director, she received a $15,000 raise," Leah told Action News. "And the associate director of my old job, he received an $11,000 raise, which, the two of them combined total my entire salary, so I believe they got rid of me so that they were able to receive their raises."

Patricia Williams, the head of Leah’s department and her old boss, told us she couldn’t really recall details of her big raise. According to Leah, Williams did not take on more responsibilities and, with Leah’s position eliminated, actually had to manage fewer people than she used to to receive her 21% raise

And there’s William’s senior deputy, Robert Salisbury, whose hefty hike in pay certainly seems to have come at the expense of laid-off Leah. Leah says Salisbury is managing fewer people now than he had before the elimination of her job, with no increase in responsibility. And, she says, he got a 19%, $11,000 raise.

Salisbury, too, refuses to talk about why he deserved such a hefty hike or just where the money came from at a cash-strapped university like EMU.

Now remember, these raises and all the others were approved by the university’s governing body, the Board of Regents, the same bunch that okayed university president Sam Kirkpatrick’s lavishly furnished multi-million dollar home also paid for with university money.

Board chairman Philip Incarnati has consistently refused to talk publicly about any of these issues, even after legislators signed on to a resolution last week that called for the resignation of Incarnati and the entire board for misuse of public funds and a lack of adequate oversight at the school.

Incarnati ran from us at the last Board of Regents meeting, and he refused to respond to the legislative action. He then cancelled a news conference and drove off in a huff just last Friday because Action News chief investigative reporter Steve Wilson was present with some questions he does not want to answer.

"Say, look, we’ll give you an option, we’ll be willing to have any other reporter but we do not want Mr. Wilson," EMU spokesperson Pamela Young told us.

University public relations people have told Channel 7 management that Wilson’s reports have upset some on campus, and that he is just not welcomed when public officials speak to other reporters. They did not immediately respond to Action News’ written inquiries about the raises, although they did release documents that confirm the current salaries of school administrators.

Meanwhile, an arbitrator has upheld the school’s right to layoff Leah in wake of budget problems, and she now has a lawsuit pending against the school.

"If you’re saying that you need monies to balance the budget, to be able to fund the university, then to give enormous raises such as $20,000, 15,000, and $10,000, it just does not seem fair to me as an employee of the university," Leah says.

Some EMU employees received raises of up to 28%. 32 received raises of 10% or more, 4 got 20% or more, and 80 got 2% raises. Raises cost EMU $701,896 a year.

After first refusing to answer Steve's questions about pay raises for administrators, EMU now claims Leah Mill's bosses got raises while she got the axe due to what they called "a review of internal pay relationships of comparable level positions within the division and the University." As for the idea the two administrators just divvied up Leah's salary between them: the school says the allegation is, "unfounded."