The man in the mansion at Eastern
Michigan University was packing up Wednesday night. EMU
President Samuel Kirkpatrick has announced his resignation,
and said he will be leaving the campus in the next six weeks
or so. Chief investigative reporter Steve Wilson first told us
about Kirkpatrick’s $5.2 million "presidential palace," and
now has details of some of the "lovely parting gifts"
Kirkpatrick and his wife will be taking with them.
It’s a fine farewell from his pals on the Board of
Regents—and Michigan taxpayers will be footing his bills for a
long time to come.
He came to EMU four years ago with a deal that paid him not
just a $200,000 a year base salary, but a guaranteed 10%
year-old bonus, a generous moving allowance and expense
account, $3,500 a month to pay his living expenses, and
ultimately the keys to the sprawling and lavishly furnished
presidential palace he and the Mrs. moved into last Fall as
student tuition and fees were skyrocketing and other campus
facilities badly needed work.
"It’s not lavish," Kirkpatrick told us. "It’s a fine
multipurpose facility for the university."
You may remember we had to chase him to Wisconsin to ask
about how he and wife Pam were deeply involved in making the
University House the palace that it is, despite their public
statements to the contrary. He was in Milwaukee pitching to be
chancellor at the state university there, and later claimed he
withdrew is application so he could spend another year or more
at EMU.
We have now learned that two weeks ago he and EMU’s board
of regents started quietly working out a deal for him to
leave. An EMU news release says he’ll go back where he came
from, to the National Association of State Colleges and
Universities in Washington, but he won’t go empty handed:
- He’ll still collect his full salary, bonuses and benefits
for the next two years. Technically, he’ll be on a
"sabbatical";
- EMU will give him $25,000 more for expenses, including
moving to the new job in Washington.
- When his EMU checks finally do stop coming two years
after he leaves, health insurance will still be provided to
him and his wife indefinitely, at least until both are
eligible for Medicare or some other policy kicks in. It’s a
package worth nearly half a million dollars, money that will
come from cash-strapped students and taxpayers alike.
"Sounds like a golden parachute to me, and it’s not
appropriate with public dollars," State Representative Paul
Gieleghem told us.
Gieleghem says the regents have given away the store yet
again. He’s already filed a house resolution calling for the
regents the resign and says the golden parachute they’ve just
given to Kirkpatrick is only more evidence of a lack of
oversight for the good of the school.
"What we see is a severance package similar to what’s
provided by boards of corporate America, but these are public
dollars," he says. "They’re very scarce, so what he have is
responsibility to make sure that we put as many dollars to
education of students as we can."
EMU’s board of regents, the group that’s supposed to assure
fiscal responsibility at the school, is appointed, not
elected. Kirkpatrick’s resignation announcement comes on ahead
of the release of a state audit long underway. The state
auditor general’s report on what if any funds were misused in
the building of the EMU President’s house should be released
early in July.
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