DuPage Co. (ECWd) –
During the October 2014 Board of Trustees meeting, the entire finance department at COD stood behind their leadership, Lynn Sypata and Thomas Glaser, both were later terminated from COD (click here), in what appeared to be a very well prepared full frontal assault against Adam Andrzejewski, Openthebooks.com, and Illinois Leaks.
I had not attended that meeting, and until recently had not watched the video. What jumped out at me was a direct attack pointed at Openthebooks.com and Illinois leaks.
“Open the books and Illinois leaks, must really enjoy this time of year, Halloween, because they love to try and scare people. They want you to believe that behind every debit, credit, or any transaction here at the college that the boogie man lurks. That’s the reason behind all these FOIA requests, but like a child that learns about Halloween as they get older, when you strip away the mask and the costume there is nothing to be afraid of, that it’s all fake, that same holds true here.”
Part of his rhetoric was to use some very interesting subjects as his version of the truth and a means to discredit us and others. The presentation focused on three very interesting points.
- Internal controls
- Accreditation
- AAA bond/credit rating
.
Let’s address Glaser’s bragging points one at a time.
Internal controls:
- MR Bauer Grant & Contract with private attorney – never approved by the board and appears to have been done in total secret by Thomas Glaser (Click here)
- JLL contract entered into without any board approval and appears to hvae been done in total secret by Thomas Glaser (Click here)
- Max McGraw expenditures without any board approval then multiple stories created by Glaser to defend it. (Click here)
- IRS findings of illegal expenditures at the Waterleaf that now the taxpayers get to pay for, as if the first time was not enough. (Click here)
- Radio Engineer indicted for Fraud and facing multiple felony counts in criminal court. COD attempted to have public records sealed to prevent the truth from coming out. (Click here and here
- Laundry list of our articles all pointing to a problem with internal controls (Click here)
None of those major events were uncovered by the audit he bragged about, yet all of them have led to the reforms we are now seeing at COD.
Accreditation:
- COD placed on probation by Higher Learning Comission approximatly one year after Glaser braggs about the accreditation status, all prior to pesky FOIA requets exposing the truth. (Click here)
- On April 29, 2015, 6 months after Glaser’s bragging, the Physical Therapist Assistant Educator Program at the College of DuPage was placed on “Probationary Accreditation” due to COD’s “inability to demonstrate compliance with a significant number of evaluative criteria“. (Click here)
What can we say? Faculty raised the flag and Senior management denied anything was wrong. Again, another example of how wrong Thomas Glaser was in his attack on those striving to do nothing more than ensure our government is following the rules.
AAA Bond/Credit Rating:
- S&P downgrades COD credit rating (Click here)
- Moody’s downgrades COD credit rating (Click here)
How ironic, Glaser used both of those firms in his rhetoric with his failed attempt to discredit us and others. Kind of hard to dispute those facts.
What was it that Glaser said at that meeting?
“So sorry to smash your pumpkins, by any objective measure, there is no boogie man here, these are the undisputed facts, not rhetoric”
Mr. Glaser, sorry to smash “your” pumpkin because by any objective measure, there was in fact boogie men at COD, and that is the undisputed facts, not rhetoric.
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