UTMB RESCINDS BONUSES AFTER TFA INQUIRY

One would think that any outfit pleading $710 million in damages due to Hurricane Ike would instantly cut out bonuses and such, particularly $3 million worth of bonuses, eh?  The corporate management at UTMB (likely in consultation with the corporate management at UT) apparently waited until someone was looking a little too close at the purse strings before acting.  Here's the time-line and accompanying documentation:

November 17, 2008: Having heard about some hefty staff incentive payments (SIPs), otherwise known as bonuses being paid out at UTMB, the Blogmeister sent in a Texas Public Information Request. 

Download Reamy-Kelso 081117

December 8, 2008: Having not heard a word from UTMB well beyond the 10 business days laid out by law, the Blogmeister sent the following polite e-mail:

Download Reamy-Kelso PIA Status 081208

December 9, 2008: Getting a bit impatient at hearing nothing, the Blogmeister sent the following e-mail:

 Download Reamy-Kelso PIA Status no 2 081209

In response, the Blogmeister and others wanting info received this notice stating that UTMB had just begun, as of December 9th, to process information requests and warning that the response would likely be slow:

http://txfacassn.typepad.com/files/kelso-pia-requestors-081209.pdf

December 16, 2008: Almost a month after I sent my original request, UTMB answered. 

Download Kelso-Reamy PIA Resp 081216

So now, what did the answer include?  First, that UT rather than UTMB contracted with RIF consultants Kurt Salmon and Associates.  TFA will have to ask UT for that information. 

Second, that UTMB was scrambling to cancel those bonuses only AFTER the beans were about to be spilled to the public.  Please admire this December 5, 2008 e-mail, a communication sent 18 days after the Blogmeister's information request:

Download Shingleton-Admins re SIPs 081205

Third, readers should admire the following UTMB-provided Excel spreadsheet and the bonuses these folks have been giving themselves and would have received shortly:

Download SIP Speadsheet FY07 and 08

Finally, note the difference in the asterisked note in the spreadsheet versus what the December 5, 2008 e-mail says.  The e-mail says that the institution just can't support the SIPs because of Ike's devastation.  The asterisked note says that the bonuses weren't paid because "conditions for plan payout were not met."  One wonders if those conditions were created by Ike or by third-party interest in their bonuses. 

Right up until December 5th, these administrators, these people who RIF'd 3,000 people just before Christmas, were still in line to get a big, fat Christmas present from UTMB's stash of cash. 

Isn't UTMB claiming it's going broke? 

Comments

[the person who made the December 15, 2008 10:24 AM post]

UTMB IS going broke- ethically.

[facts? we don't need no stinkin facts!]

Salmon Associates have been on this campus since July and staying at a condo on the east end. So Mr Kelso is either out of the loop or he is a... you fill in the blank.

Seeing that the Associate Dean of Administration and Finance Austin Program is still on the payroll makes me feel sad and tired all over. That person is way over his head in that position.

So it goes.

[bail out? bet not!]

so these poor admins will have to scrape by w/o their SIPs. The fact that it was even a thought that rattled in their empty heads boggles me.

[The Fredo Corleone School of Sport Fishing]

I keep thinking that the behavior of UTMB and the Regents can't get any worse -- and I keep being disappointed. Never in a million years would I have thought that UTMB would be planning to go ahead with SIPs at a time when the institution claims to be so 'strapped for cash' that it was 'necessary' to fire nearly 3000 loyal employees.

Thanks, Blogmeister, for your efforts to obtain this information. My gratitude to you is matched only by my outrage that it took your investigation to get UTMB to re-think the SIPs.

[????]

Is it time to ask the FBI for help !The mission of the FBI is "To ..... to uphold and enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and to provide leadership and criminal justice services to federal, state, municipal, and international agencies and partners."[2]

[utmb faculty]

Unbelievable selfishness and heartlessness -- those obscenely high paid individuals should have been taking paycuts to make at least a gesture that they are for saving the instituion. Hail to the blog dude for being persistent on this and finding out the facts, and perhaps influencing the outcome by shaming them.

[In amazement]

They should return the bonuses they got this year as well as forget the ones that had coming. That is simply obscene on their part to keep those bonuses.

Guess what? They would receive those incentives every year, even though they never hit their goals. Each year one of the goals would be to achieve a desired financial target. That would never happen, yet the incentives would still be paid out. The incentive plans were such a joke...

[Wanted forensic accountant !!!]

Robert G. Roche, a retired chief of the IRS Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS, gives this
description of a forensic accountant: Someone who can look behind the facade---not accept the records at their face value---someone who has a suspicious mind that the documents he or she is looking at may not be what they purport to be and someone who has the expertise to go out and conduct very detailed interviews of individuals to develop the truth, especially if some are presumed to be lying.

I urge all faculty to attend the legislative session Jan. 7. The city, institution. and job that you save might be your own.

[utmb faculty]

OHSU executives agree to take a 20 percent cut in their base pay

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/12/ohsu_executives_take_a_20_pece.html

'nuff said