"Additionally, UCF leaders failed to clearly disclose the funding sources of construction projects to trustees or the Board of Governors". Don't the trustees or Board of Governors know how to ask questions? You're telling me tens of millions of dollars are spent on construction projects that take years to occur but nobody bothered to check where the funds are coming from and what type of money it is? Who from the State should be auditing that?
If there were tens of millions of dollars that were earmarked as a certain type, then why did nobody from the State identify the money as such when the request came in for these new construction projects?
When schlubs like us buy houses we have to show banks what assets/money we have, and where it came from, in order for them to approve our loans. That way you are not trying to buy something they know you can't afford (or are more likely to default on if anything goes wrong in life). For instance, $100k shows up in your account two months before requesting a loan and that is the reason you are able to afford the loan. That sends up lots of red flags. I mean maybe they showed the bank(s) where the money is and it is not the banks job to justify approval of those funds being a certain type of money, but somebody from the State should have approved the money being earmarked for these projects.
I've worked in the DoD for two decades and this could be a case where the school tried to use money allocated for one bucket (let's call it "sustainment"), when the money was earmarked for a different bucket (let's call it "development"). There is certainly sometimes grey areas for performing work that is deemed "development" versus "sustainment" but I don't see how building a new building would fit into "sustainment". Typically "sustainment" dollars are easier to come by then "development" dollars because "sustainment" dollars are already part of yearly budgets and have to just be adjusted up and down, whereas "development" money has to go through a different justification process.
That said, we should just let it all play out before coming to our own conclusions, especially since 99% of us on here (and out in the general public) don't know construction finance, University budgets, rules/regulations on how to use State funding, etc... Let the lawyers argue their cases and if there was wrong-doing, then heads should roll. If not, maybe there are some budgetary grey areas where additional refinement of the rules/regulations need to be made so that all the time, effort, and expense of this investigation doesn't happen again in the future.
I think this quote in the article is the only real content at this point, “Without a thorough and complete investigation, we can’t even speculate on what the remedy would be or what the limitations of a remedy would be,”