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Report Calls for Oversight Board for University of Connecticut

Posted on: Friday, 2 September 2005, 21:00 CDT

Sep. 1--The state should take from UConn some control of the university's multibillion-dollar building program plagued by safety violations and cost overruns, an investigative panel has recommended.

The commission, formed by Gov. M. Jodi Rell, is expected to submit its recommendations to Rell today. The most significant one will call for formation of a committee to oversee future construction.

The members would be appointed by the school's trustees and the governor's office. Currently, UConn has autonomy to run the UConn 2000 building program.

The report is also expected to hammer the university for hiding audits that were critical of UConn 2000.

"The commission believes that the university's decision to restrict broader awareness of critical audits was part of a broader effort to retain control of the UConn 2000 program," Co-Chairman Jonathan Pelto said Wednesday at the commission's last meeting.

The trustees would still control which building projects get funded, and the new committee would report to the board. But once a project is approved, the committee would then be in charge of selecting architects and contractors, approving final budgets and authorizing any changes to those budgets.

The committee also would hire a full-time director to oversee the day-to-day operations. Currently, the university oversees the building construction on a daily basis and also chooses contractors.

Several others recommendations are designed to ensure that there are independent controls over how the next $1 billion in state funds designated for the second phase, called UConn 21st Century, is spent.

Among the other proposed recommendations:

--Transfer all the employees from the university's recently formed Office of Building Inspectors and Fire Marshal to the state Department of Public Safety. The inspectors would be public safety employees, and report to the state building inspector and fire marshal. They would be paid by the university.

--Require the university to prioritize its deferred maintenance budget and seek board of trustee approval to pay for anything that varies from that list. The commission also is encouraging the board to hire an auditor to review the past use of the fund. The university has used the deferred maintenance budget to fund projects that should have gone out for competitive bidding but were instead paid for as change orders to already existing projects.

--Require that before a shovel goes into the ground all architectural plans and building designs be approved by the state building inspector's office.

--Require that the school use only contractors that have been qualified by the state Department of Administrative Services. Currently, the school has its own system of pre-qualifying contractors. Under the new plan, a contractor must get onto the Department of Administrative Services list to bid for UConn projects.

The commission held its final meeting Wednesday to go over the report before giving it to Rell today.

Rell will review the commission's recommendations and present a report to the legislature, whose approval is needed for several of the proposed changes -- including the formation of the new committee and the transfer of employees to the Department of Public Safety.

Rell released a statement Wednesday thanking the commission for its work and promising quick action.

Rell has grown more frustrated as reports continued to surface of fire and safety code problems at student housing complexes.

Earlier this week, she enacted what was going to be one of the commission's recommendations -- ordering the state building inspector to review the plans of all completed UConn 2000 projects to make sure that there are no more fire or safety code issues.

"My concern from the start has been the safety of the students at the University of Connecticut. After safety, my top priorities are accountability, oversight, the integrity of the process and the cost-effectiveness of the work that's being done on the campus," Rell said Wednesday.

"I look forward to receiving the commission's final recommendations and expect that action on them will be expedited. We must never again allow the zeal and desire to complete public projects to supersede oversight of the process and the protection of public funds," she added.

Rell plans to meet with UConn President Philip Austin and board of trustees Chairman John W. Rowe in a public meeting this afternoon on the Storrs campus to discuss the report's findings.

In 1995, legislators passed UConn 2000, giving the school $1 billion and total autonomy over what to build at the main and regional campuses for a 10-year period. In 2003, they approved spending another $1.3 billion for UConn 21st Century, which will be spent over the next 10 years.

Legislators wanted to give the university flexibility to spend the money as it saw fit and keep it away from the state Department of Public Works, which ran into cost overruns and delays on past UConn projects.

"The university was in fact a maintenance operation that was suddenly turned into a construction operation," said former Lt. Gov. Eunice Groark, a member of the commission.

"They didn't set out to cheat anybody. I think [school officials] got suckered in by some architects and other people," Groark said.

Groark said that the school did not have a component set up just to deal with the construction project and that was one reason why the commission was recommending the new building committee.

Rowe, the chairman of the board of trustees, said that he was pleased with the report and relieved that the commission found no evidence of fraud.

"The commission's report identifies a number of key factors which contributed to sub-optimal outcomes in certain building projects and proposes specific remedies which will be very helpful to the university going forward," he said in a prepared statement.

In an interview Wednesday, Rowe pointed out that the new building committee will still report to the board of trustees, but acknowledged that the structure will take away some of UConn's authority to run the program.

Rowe also pointed out that the committee's recommendations supplement steps that the trustees and university administrators have taken in recent months to bolster inspections, strengthen management and improve auditing.

A growing chorus of lawmakers is also calling for increased oversight of the building program.

Rep. William R. Dyson, the senior House Democrat, with more than 28 years at the Capitol, said that the legislature made a mistake in 1995 when it granted wide authority to the university on the construction.

"You can't have people watching over themselves," Dyson said. "DPW has some expertise -- whether we like it or not. When we circumvent DPW, we're usually asking for trouble. DPW ought to have some role to play here."

Pelto said that he could not judge the steps of the past but noted that changes will be made in the future.

"Have [UConn officials] done a better job than DPW would have done? We'll never know," Pelto told reporters outside the governor's office. "I'll leave to others to decide whether it was a mistake to give all of the flexibility and responsibility to the university 10 years ago, but that isn't the way things should run" in the future.

By Dave Altimari and Grace E. Merritt. Courant Staff Writers Christopher Keating and Mark Pazniokas contributed to this story.

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Source: The Hartford Courant, Connecticut

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