Opinions

ARKANSAS NEWS BUREAU COLUMNIST JOHN BRUMMETT — HOW LU HARDIN DIDN’T GET A RAISE — THURSDAY, JULY 3, 2008

Thursday, July 3, 2008 9:56 AM CDT

Sometimes it’s enough merely to tell the story. Readers may judge for themselves. After all, this is less about what I think than about what you think.

That a guy would not tell me the straight truth is his and my problem. That he would not tell the straight truth to his own staff and the public and that a major public university’s board of trustees might have broken the law — those are your problems.

So the story:

I was sitting here minding my own business May 2. It happened that the University of Central Arkansas Board of Trustees was meeting.

Because of a reduction in state budgets, it was being decided at that meeting that faculty members would get no raises and that students would pay 5 percent more in tuition.

An e-mail popped up on the screen asking if I had the nerve to report that, on this very day, Lu Hardin, the high-profile and politically potent president of UCA, was getting a raise.

I perused the next morning’s press to see if there was anything in any of the reports about a raise for Hardin. There was not a word.

So I chose the direct route. I asked UCA’s communications vice president, a fine and honorable fellow, if any action had been taken at the board meeting to provide a raise to Hardin.

He got back with me. He said no.

I believed the communications vice president.

So this week it happened that the Little Rock newspaper got wind that maybe Hardin had received some kind of raise. The paper filed a Freedom of Information request seeking all documents related to Hardin’s full “compensation.”

Well, now. Hardin had to do two things. He had to instruct university personnel to comply with the request. And he had to drive to Little Rock, come into my office, shut the door behind him and — well, let me merely relate, not characterize, what transpired.

He told me that, three years ago, an out-of-state college had inquired about an interview and maybe hiring him quickly.

So the board, through the leadership of trustee Rush Harding, offered him an incentive to stay — a $300,000 bonus at the end of five years, payable not from taxpayer funds, but privately raised ones.

What happened on May 2, he said, was that the board went into executive session for personnel discussions, and, in the course of the session, asked Hardin to leave the room. What the board then decided, he said, was to go ahead and pay him the bonus now, two years ahead of schedule, as a show of “good faith” and because of a concern that he might get courted to replace Dr. Alan Sugg as president of the University of Arkansas system.

The board came back in open session and made a perfunctory approval of all unspecified personnel decisions.

That clearly violated the spirit of the Freedom of Information law.

One of UCA’s lawyers has suggested going back to revise the minutes or maybe voting again in open meeting. Hardin has already received and deposited the check.

He insisted he’d told the truth. He said he’d received a bonus, a one-time payment of deferred compensation, not a raise. He said the Little Rock paper had “asked the right question.”

But he said he’d made an “error in judgment” and wanted to come see me personally about it.

I asked if this $300,000 would keep him at UCA if the UA system presidency job got dangled before him. He said he was 95 percent sure he’d stay at UCA, but that there was always that 5 percent.

He said he wouldn’t want to have to come see me someday about that in the uncomfortable way he was having to come see me about this.