Related: Sunday Globe Special: Westfield State's Woes
"Dobelle placed on paid leave; probe set" by Andrea Estes and Scott Allen | Globe staff, October 17, 2013
WESTFIELD — Westfield State University trustees unanimously voted to place president Evan Dobelle on administrative leave with pay after a marathon, 10-hour meeting Wednesday, while a law firm investigates allegations about Dobelle’s spending and the board’s “leadership concerns.”
Trustee chairman Jack Flynn announced at 12:30 a.m. Thursday that Dobelle would remain on paid leave while the law firm Fish & Richardson completes its inquiry into Dobelle’s spending habits, expected by Nov. 25. Thomas C. Frongillo, a principal in the firm, has been representing the trustees in their negotiations with Dobelle.
Dobelle, who spent hours with trustees at their closed-door session accompanied by his attorney, left without speaking to reporters. But Dobelle’s publicist, George Regan, issued a scathing statement saying that Dobelle plans to file a federal lawsuit against the trustees for the “egregious” violation of his rights.
“We are disappointed that the board has acted unlawfully and has obviously buckled to the intense political pressure surrounding this issue,” Regan said in the statement. “The board has defamed president Dobelle and allowed him to be defamed and there will be major consequences to these actions.”
The vote to place Dobelle on leave came at the end of a day on which the faculty and librarians taking part in a vote at Westfield State overwhelmingly expressed no confidence in Dobelle’s leadership. It also came as Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office launched an investigation into whether Dobelle made illegal false claims to obtain reimbursement for his expenses.
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The trustees called Wednesday’s special meeting in the face of mounting pressure to take action after an outside accountant’s report in August found that Dobelle had repeatedly violated university policy by charging personal expenses to university credit cards. The accountant also said documentation for tens of thousands in expenses was so scant that he could not tell whether they were legitimate.
But when the report by O’Connor & Drew was released in August, several board members challenged its legitimacy since the full board never approved it. Dobelle contends that the board’s chairman, Flynn, a State Police executive, authorized the expense review as part of a plot to turn Westfield State into a “diploma mill” for the State Police.
Since then, state Inspector General Glenn Cunha has raised his own serious questions about Dobelle’s extensive business travel, luxury hotel stays, meals at high-end restaurants, and entertainment all charged to the school. Meanwhile, state Higher Education Commissioner Richard Freeland has frozen some state funding to Westfield State, citing concern about Dobelle’s ability to manage money.
“It seems to me highly questionable whether president Dobelle can or should continue to provide leadership to Westfield State University,” Freeland wrote to the trustees last week.
On Tuesday, the attorney general’s office sent a letter to trustees announcing that prosecutors will be looking into whether Dobelle made any false claims to justify his business expenses, according to someone with direct knowledge of the letter. In 2010, Dobelle had to repay $20,000 in business expenses after an auditor determined that the charges were personal, which Dobelle blamed on clerical errors....
There were few outward signs of support for Dobelle at Wednesday’s meeting, in contrast to the August trustees meeting when the board room was packed with student supporters. This time, roughly 20 students in attendance protested Dobelle’s conduct, some carrying signs reading, “Don’t reward greed” or “throwaway kids fight back,” in reference to Dobelle’s description of the disadvantages faced by Westfield State students....
Just before the trustees went into a closed executive session shortly after 2 p.m., representatives of the faculty union gave them the results of their no confidence vote....
“I’m appalled. I’m disappointed. I’m frustrated,” said Westfield State education professor Robin DiAngelo, explaining why she voted “no confidence” in Dobelle. “I want it to be over, but I want it to be over with a satisfying ending: Termination.”
Only 28 percent, or 61 teachers and librarians, said they were still confident in Dobelle’s leadership, some praising Dobelle’s efforts to raise the university’s stature over the last seven years.
“Evan Dobelle is the finest president that Westfield State has ever had,” said Laurie Simpson, director of academic advising center, and an adjunct faculty member.
“I know the media story and I know the real story. I have full confidence in Evan Dobelle. . . . Many people here support the president.”
Dobelle’s spokesman, Regan, rejected the vote of no confidence, noting that half of the faculty members and librarians did not participate in the vote. Over all, he claimed less than half of the union membership voted no confidence in his leadership.
“If president Dobelle had read the sensational headlines or had heard the avalanche of threats from commissioner Freeland, who promised to withhold needed funds from WSU, he would be inclined to vote against himself too,” Regan said in a statement.
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Also see:
Dobelle and Regan: Two of a kind
Give Dobelle the boot
"Westfield State’s Dobelle sought deal" by Andrea Estes and Scott Allen | Globe Staff, October 25, 2013
Evan Dobelle would have stepped down as president of Westfield State University last week if trustees had agreed to let him take a paid sabbatical and return as a tenured professor in the fall, say several people briefed on the private negotiations.
But the trustees, alarmed at Dobelle’s free-spending and increasingly combative public remarks, placed him on paid leave instead, even making him turn in the keys to his university car at the end of the marathon Oct. 16 trustees meeting.
Now Dobelle has filed a federal lawsuit charging that trustees and the state’s top higher education official have conspired to destroy his reputation, raising the stakes in a three-month-long leadership crisis that has rocked the state university. Lawyers hired by the trustees are already investigating Dobelle’s spending habits with plans to report their findings by Nov. 25.
“At age 68, Dr. Dobelle’s long-celebrated career has been swiftly, unjustly, and perhaps irreparably damaged,” reads Dobelle’s complaint, filed Thursday, which alleges that the investigation of his spending is part of a smear campaign to drive him from power at the 5,400-student university near Springfield.
Dobelle, who is described as a visionary five times in the lawsuit, blamed much of his trouble on Jack Flynn, a senior State Police official who became chairman of the trustees in July 2012.
Since then, Dobelle and his publicist say, Flynn has been out to undermine Dobelle so that he could turn Westfield State into a “diploma mill” for state troopers.
“Flynn’s mission of attacking Dr. Dobelle took place without regard to rules or laws specifically designed to avoid these types of cowboy tactics,” says the complaint. Dobelle contended the investigation of his business expenses was just part of a “guerrilla war for control of the university.”
Flynn did not respond to requests for comment, but he has denied any conspiracy against Dobelle. Westfield State officials have said there is no evidence to support Dobelle’s contention that the school was being turned into a diploma mill.
Flynn did hire an accounting firm to review Dobelle’s use of credit cards last year, including a $200,000 tab on one university-related card, without seeking approval of the 11-member board. But Flynn has said he was trying to handle the charges quietly because they were embarrassing.
A spokeswoman for Higher Education Commissioner Richard Freeland, who is named as a defendant, said she had not seen the lawsuit, “but it appears to be yet another distraction from the issue of whether state funds were used inappropriately, which is the only issue that matters here.”
Freeland froze some state funding to Westfield State earlier this month, out of concern about Dobelle’s leadership.
For a time, it looked as if the two sides might avoid further public blood-letting during the closed-door trustees meeting last week.
Trustees talked for hours with Dobelle and his lawyer in hope of reaching a settlement under which Dobelle would depart. At least some in attendance said afterward that the two sides appeared to be making progress.
“There was an effort to resolve it,” said one person familiar with the negotiations. Trustees “talked about saying the hell with it and just give” Dobelle a deal that would allow him to walk away with no finding of wrongdoing.
Dobelle wanted an immediate sabbatical from his job as president, during which he would be paid at his presidential salary of $240,920 a year. He would eventually return as a tenured professor, probably at a salary of more than $100,000 a year.
Dobelle also wanted the university to pay his legal bills, already more than $100,000, from his fight with trustees. He also wanted the trustees to stop their investigations.
In the end, the trustees rejected Dobelle’s proposal because they thought it would be seen as rewarding bad behavior, say the people briefed on the meeting.
“You get a reward for doing a good job, not bankrupting a place,” said Edward Marth, chairman of the board of the Westfield State College Foundation, the school’s fund-raising arm.
Instead, after a long meeting with no break for lunch or dinner, the trustees placed Dobelle on paid leave while a law firm reviews the allegations against him.
Several people briefed on the inquiry say they expect it to lead to Dobelle’s departure.
The trustees asked for the keys to his Toyota Highlander, which the school had given him when he was hired in 2007. The trustees also took back his university cellphone and directed Dobelle not to contact university personnel.
“You don’t think it’s personal? How many times does the chairman of the board of a college ask a president to turn in his car keys?” said Dobelle’s publicist, George Regan.
Dobelle was looking for a “pittance,” especially compared to the multimillion-dollar payout Freeland received when he left his job as president of Northeastern University in 2006, Regan said.
It has been a steep fall for Dobelle, who at an August board meeting appeared to have the backing of most of the school’s 11 trustees.
But Dobelle’s actions in the past two months — including verbal attacks against Flynn, Freeland, and Governor Deval Patrick — helped galvanize the board, which voted unanimously to place Dobelle on leave.
In fact, it was Judge Terry Craven, formerly one of his staunchest supporters, who made the motion, said an official briefed on the trustees’ meeting.
Some trustees may also have been persuaded by the answers Dobelle gave to intense questioning by Betsy Scheibel, a trustee who formerly served as district attorney in Hampshire and Franklin counties, the official said.
She questioned Dobelle for more than an hour, and Dobelle’s answers only solidified the vote against him, the official said.
Dobelle’s suit, filed in US District Court in Springfield, demands unspecified damages from Freeland and Flynn, as well as trustees Kevin Queenin and Scheibel and the accounting firm that did the original review of Dobelle’s spending, O’Connor & Drew of Braintree.
“The media frenzy that has developed as a result of the defendants’ actions has harmed severely Dr. Dobelle’s reputation, such that it will likely be impossible for him to find comparable work,” reads the complaint. “Indeed, the actions of the individual defendants set forth above have stigmatized Dr. Dobelle, causing him to be the object of scorn and ridicule.”
Aside from the lawsuit, Dobelle’s bargaining power appears to be limited. Under his employment agreement, the trustees can terminate him — and pay him nothing — if they find he failed to follow “applicable policies or procedures governing the use and management of public moneys and trust funds.”
Both O’Connor & Drew and state Inspector General Glenn Cunha have found that Dobelle repeatedly violated university policy by charging personal expenses on school credit cards. Last week Attorney General Martha Coakley launched an investigation to determine whether Dobelle made any claims, in violation of the state’s false claims law, to justify his expenses.
Freeland met Wednesday with Elizabeth Preston, the school’s acting president, and is expected to approve her appointment as interim president for the rest of the school year.
After the meeting, Freeland said the state has released more than $220,000 in grant money that he had previously ordered withheld.
The state is still holding back $2 million in funding for a new science center.
If the trustees had agreed to give Dobelle a faculty position and a sabbatical, they would have met with resistance from the faculty union, whose contract expressly bars any president of the school from joining the faculty after leaving the job.
“We would have gone to the labor relations board to prevent it,” said Buzz Hoagland, head of the Massachusetts State College Association, the union that represents the school’s teachers and librarians. The union gave Dobelle a vote of no confidence last week.
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