Dejà vu on lavish spending? SHADOWS ON HIGH: E. Gordon Gee: The Man With the Scarlet "O"

By Brian Rothenburg, July 20, 2007

progressohio.org

Imagine if your Governor was the highest paid in the United States and imagine how the Ohio public would react.

Imagine if you provided the Governor with no limits on renovating the Governor’s Mansion, but knew from his history that he’d spent $6 million on his last residence, imported a room from England for another Ivy League gig and was the subject of a major Wall Street Journal expose’ on his prior spending habits -- fair or not.

Imagine if you found a Governor that created jobs in Ohio decades ago, plopped him back in Bexley today and waited for that magic to work again 17 years later – as if you are in some strange Austin Powers’ political episode where he lands at the “Oval” some Saturday from a strange land down south.

Ohioans are a scrappy lot. When the chips are down, they seek a hero. And when they are wandering in the wilderness, they seek a messianic presence to rescue them from the confusion of false idols. The fact is that Heroes never die – in fact their legend only grows in the memory of distant minds.

But there is a certain truth in the parables of the Bible that comes to mind about E. Gordon Gee and his popular coronation this past week. It reminds me of when Moses left the Israelites to scale the mountains for the 10 Commandments, only to come down and find them worshipping fallen idols, lost in the desert, longing for belief. In the end, Moses never went into the Promised Land – only the Israelites crossed the border.

And if we Ohioans have strayed in the desert, we are a different people with a different economy than OSU President E. Gordon Gee discovered 17 years ago when he arrived from the Mountains of Colorado to the Mountaintop at OSU. And because of that, like him or not, the E. Gordon Gee of 2007 takes an investiture in a very different Ohio.

The Buckeye Institute’s Richard Vedder wrote recently, “The highest level administrators at the great universities I know alternatively despise, despair or are jealous of Gee, looking at him as a rube upstart without the cultivation and manners and dignity that a University president should have. But he delivers – raises schools in the US News and World report rankings, builds pretty buildings, throws great parties, and raises tons of cash. Isn’t that what higher education is all about these days.”

And therein lies the rub. It’s not what higher education should be about these days. Not with Ohio’s undereducated population struggling to pay rising tuition costs at our state colleges. Not with OSU, a land-grant college, suddenly being so selective as to place itself out of reach for even some of Ohio’s brightest. Not with all public colleges struggling to pay for upkeep of the growing number of buildings.

OSU can no longer afford a PR man as its president.

The recent high-level investment in Higher Ed is a financial commitment that the new administration has made to boost the state’s economy.

We are desperate for jobs and our Universities are the cornerstone of what little hope there is of past glory. Our Governor may not feel it in the honeymoon of today, but jobs are our hope – not newspaper rankings. Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher’s recent trip to Russia is just the start of the kind of focus, zeal and commitment it will take to recreate a burgeoning Ohio economy.

A recent Quinnipiac survey found that 28% of all Ohioans feel one of their family member will leave Ohio for a better opportunity in the next year. And if that responsibility rests with our elected leaders like Governor Strickland – it also rests at the feet of Ohio’s Higher Ed establishment that long has criticized cuts in funding and stands at the threshold of all it could want.

And if Professor Vedder is right about Dr. Gee, then the OSU club we at Shadows on High often dub “Scarlet and Green” should fear a return of a 17-year old business model.

• THE BUILDING BOOM MODEL IS BUSTED: With the University of Phoenix online across the world, and numerous private colleges and even Central Michigan University with branch Columbus campuses – pretty buildings may be a thing in Higher Ed’s past. (Not to mention OSU’s pretty building – The Blackwell -- named after marketing professor Roger Blackwell, found guilty two years ago of insider trading).

You don’t need pretty buildings named after the famous or the felonious -- or even need a picturesque setting while you are sitting in your family room watching your class lecture via computer. You may need labs and hands-on instruction for the sciences and certain disciplines. But today’s classroom requirements are much different than yesterday’s. Technology has made Higher Ed more portable.

• THE PARTY’S OVER: The famed Gee parties are legendary and come with baggage. The Wall Street Journal a few years back did a damning article about the $700,000 in entertainment and personal chef costs of Dr. Gee at Vanderbilt. The $3 million renovation of the President’s House at Brown (including a conservatory built in England and shipped to Brown) and a $6 million renovation of the President’s House at Vanderbilt were also prominently mentioned.

Dr. Gee pointed out that those parties helped him raise money. Still, even the Vanderbilt Trustees created controls for his lavish spending.

• IT’S ABOUT THE CLUB: The bottom line is this is about endowment cash for the institution and the wealth that fuels that money machine is an exclusive club. But the problem is that for Ohioans starved for jobs, and elected officials clawing to survive in the barren economic desert, endowment cash may not mean a whole lot come 2010.

The Wall Street Journal article details a Vanderbilt Committee report led by a retired investment banker, which found the full board never approved the budget or financial items between 2000 and 2005. Among the report’s recommendations was a special panel to monitor Gee’s entertainment, travel, food staff and maintenance expenditures on the President’s mansion.

If there is ever a telltale neon warning sign in Ohio these days, it lies in the shadows of the echo chambers of Ed Boards and board room power ties that cling all too fast to connected straw men like Bob Ney, or Tom Noe, or Bob Taft, or Frank Gruttadauria and a list of endless false power prophets. Given Ohio’s recent past with fallen idols who had little financial oversight, the WSJ article is troubling. Ohio citizens have lost enough public money with the help of loosey-goosey financial checks and balances.

In a political environment where food is scrutinized at all levels of Ohio government thanks to gourmet meals at the Board of Regents [ to the point where the public seemed to be outraged over boxed bologna sandwiches, chips and brownies at event like the BMVs annual computer training sessions ] it would seem logical that OSU Trustees would be sensitized to unnecessary spending and write in appropriate oversight given the public lashing – fair or not – that Gee received over Vanderbilt and Brown expenses.

The Columbus Dispatch last Sunday gave Gee an opportunity to address the Wall Street Journal article when he said:

“In this instance, (the president's house) is in fairly good shape. It does need to have some renovation. I have a particular philosophy. One is the fact that I entertain all the time, so the house needs to be made available for entertaining. ... Secondly, I believe very strongly in people coming and staying with me like a bed and breakfast … I've always used my home to celebrate the community that we're in. But I think being transparent about it, and second of all, having everyone understand that I'm intending on raising $2.5 billion (in a capital campaign). Whatever we expend on buffing the house up will be paid for every month.”

Will OSU adapt away from monolithic buildings to the web-based worlds of our future? Will OSU really be able to become a job incubator for in-state jobs that an increasingly desperate Legislative crowd has anointed and invested? Will the magic of endowments return because of the mystique beneath the bow tie, or is the lagging endowment a sign of a changing desert, in part, because of the Fortune 500 losses in Ohio?

The question is whether the homage to past glory and hope that Ohioans find E. Gordon Gee worth the price tag:

• A $775,000 yearly salary.
• A $250,000 deferred compensation package per year.
• An open ended agreement to allow renovation of the President’s House in Bexley.
• A PERS retirement package averaged off of $775,000 if he stays three years.

Certainly outside sources fund a large part of the cost. But it is still a public institution. And we know that spending on such a scale would doom almost any other public official in any office in Ohio.

What makes this public official so different? Lots of things, but mainly fierce loyalty from Les Wexner, founder and chairman of Limited Brands. Wexner is central Ohio’s most powerful resident, among Ohio’s most influential citizens and one of America’s wealthiest men.

Wexner was so unhappy with Gee’s predecessor, Karen Holbrook, that he’s rumored to have helped engineer not only her ouster but also reshape the Board of Trustees to insure that he could hand-pick her successor. His admiration for Gee is well-known.

In fact, some insiders in the shadows of the Statehouse are of the opinion that Wexner lured Gee back, not because he wanted to pick the next OSU president but because he wanted to pick the next most influential public voice in State Government. His concern over Strickland – whose pro-union views conflict with Wexner’s overseas business endeavors, are also well known.

While Gee’s spending habits will be the subject of intrigue, they could play second fiddle to his relationship to the Strickland Administration – the new governor who already stands firmly against pricey lunches and for public colleges; but also seems decidedly less socially ostentatious and bookishly more policy oriented than camera oriented.

And the reality is that outside of the “Scarlet and Green Club,” for most Ohioans this is not about financial endowments or Ohio’s notoriously self-immolating “king of the hill” politics. It’s about our need for an economic hero and jobs for our graduating Buckeye sons and daughters.

And you just can’t stop thinking that the block “O” on his chest is scarlet in more than just color. Heroes are larger than life and Gordon Gee is expected to be not just what he really was – but the legend or memory of what people think he was embellished over time.

While OSU Trustees may be satisfied with financial endowments and budget gold, most Ohioans are looking for this collegiate Moses to create hope, opportunity and to create jobs – not a testosterone-laden comparison of University financial endowment size at the annual Big Ten Presidents’ Conference Dinner, or PR rollouts of college magazine rankings and new buildings.

In the end, the E. Gordon Gee of the past, just awoke in a new land and inherited not just the highest salary in the country, but the highest threshold from which to fall. But then again, he has a golden parachute.