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Once more on UCA, with feeling Saturday, Jul 12, 2008 By John Brummett Could you stand one more column, for now, on the University of Central Arkansas and the no-longer secret bonus for Lu Hardin, the president? Thanks. Appreciate your indulgence. Rush Harding called. He's the investment banker and businessman in Little Rock who is acknowledged to be the stoutest member of the UCA Board of Trustees. He's Hardin's main benefactor. First let's get our characters, our Hardin and our Harding, straight. Neither should be confused with Harding University, the Church of Christ school with the liberal political science professor who has decided to take his blog underground because supporting Barack Obama was getting him in all kinds of trouble. Hardin, first name Lu, is the former state senator and veteran politico who is the hired president of UCA and got the $300,000 bonus in May that neither he nor the board told anyone about. Harding, first name Rush, is the highly successful businessman who sits by gubernatorial appointment (Mike Huckabee's) on the university's board of trustees. And that's the board that met in private to award the bonus - from student payments for books and food - to Hardin, then didn't declare in public, as required by law, what it had done. Hardin is the one who told me his bonus was not a raise. And he's the one who told me the bonus came from private money, which wasn't right either. Again, it was Rush Harding, the private businessman and board member, who called. He has a commanding nature and he comes from the can-do world of private deals. It's easy to imagine his declaring that the board needed to get 300-grand to Lu quickly because you don't want to take a chance on losing a blowing-going president. Harding had one thing he wanted to say to me, and, since he called, I had one thing I wanted to ask him. What he wanted to say was that he'd like to amplify something I'd written. I'd cited his quote from another publication to the effect that, considering Hardin's accomplishments, Lu was the "least paid" man on the UCA campus, even with the $300,000. I'd written that what Harding had said was true if you measured accomplishment in money generated and enrollment figures and political prominence. But then I'd suggested that you might argue that a great teacher, a great professor, one instructing and inspiring young minds, might more properly be called the "least paid." Harding said he wanted to make sure that I and everyone else understood that he was talking about Hardin's being the "least paid" in strict economic efficiency terms, but that no one could possibly exalt educators more than he. Together his parents had 70 years as educators in Monroe County, he said. He commenced calling the names of educators, past and present, whom he admired. I said I would relate his point. Then I asked him my question, which went like this: What in the world were you guys thinking? He didn't really answer so much as he groaned. He said the board had decided publicly three years ago to bestow this bonus on Hardin after five years. So it didn't think it had to say again publicly that it was moving up the payment by two years, or so he said. He said this same pot of money had been tapped to provide a kind of severance pay upon the departure of the last president, Win Thompson. But then he acknowledged that, in that case, the payoff had been structured for legality by Thompson's smart lawyer, Tom Courtway of Conway, a former leading state legislator. It also wasn't hidden. Now Courtway is a UCA vice president, working for the taxpayers. Why did the board leave Courtway, such a vital and experienced staff resource, as clueless to this bonus for Hardin as everyone else? "Rest assured we'll ask Tom next time," Harding said ruefully. "It goes without saying: We did a lot of things wrong here. And we're paying a price. This is about the worst publicity UCA has ever received. And we deserve it." I'll give him the last word. ------- John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
