Anybody who wonders why Gov. Rick Scott mixes it up with state colleges and universities need only look at Edison State College in Fort Myers.
Edison, with 15,000 credit and 3,000 noncredit students, is trying to emerge from a costly embarrassment called Kenneth Walker.
Walker is the college's unlamented semi-former president.
Semi, because Walker is out only in Edison's dreams. Trustees voted 7-1 just after Thanksgiving to place him on paid leave and hire an attorney to investigate whether he can be terminated with cause. But this college exec isn't going quietly.
Never mind that students and faculty have been calling for his firing for months, or that he has been embroiled in improper course substitutions, the termination of several administrators and miscommunication about the college's unaccredited nursing program.
Walker hired a law firm of his own. And what a law firm. Highly respected Greenberg Traurig has 1,800 lawyers around the world. Not that long ago Walker's Greenberg Traurig lawyer, Richard McCrea of the Tampa office, defended a $7.1 million wrongful termination suit filed by former University of South Florida football coach Jim Leavitt.
Which is scaring the pants off Edison trustees, who are crunching the numbers on damages and attorney fees that a forced reinstatement could bring.
Walker's annual salary package is a gargantuan $837,000. It makes him the highest paid college or university president in Florida. To send him packing without cause would cost taxpayers mightily -- he has more than $1.5 million remaining on his contract.
To try to put out the fire, Walker agreed earlier in the year to a 20 percent pay cut. But in June he said if he is involuntarily dismissed, any agreed-to pay cut would be invalidated. He said he would go after everything his contract entitles him to -- including money for a yearlong sabbatical.
Retired attorney and trustee Marjorie Starnes-Bilotti warned the board during a meeting earlier in December, "We have to decide, if he were to be terminated with cause, if the great expense of a lawsuit -- and I am sure that one would be filed -- and the publicity is worth it for this college ..."
Starnes-Bilotti says that 10 years of near-perfect evaluations and a binding contract continuing through 2013 make firing him complicated.
Consider what a good case those evaluations give Walker. Trustees have evaluated him 10 times. In six of the 10 times he's scored a perfect 4.0. In his last evaluation, in April 2011, trustees called Walker a "visionary." They referred to his "excellent leadership."
Also, Walker's contract had already given him the authority to execute all documents, agreements, contracts and payments of up to $250,000 on behalf of the board of trustees. In late June trustees increased that figure to $500,000 -- money the president could spend however he wishes, without need of trustees' approval.
What's going on here?
Four years ago, Edison was a midsized community college. How does this emerging state college of no spectacular stature outside its Southwest Florida bailiwick justify paying its president $837,000?
That 837,000 taxpayer dollars is twice the salary of the president of the United States -- he makes $400,000, which includes a $50,000 living expense. It's about three times the salary of the vice president, who makes $230,700, and the $223,500 salary of the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court.
None of this could have escaped the notice of Gov. Rick Scott. Edison, with campuses in Lee, Charlotte and Collier counties, is homeboy territory for the governor. Scott has a nose for fiscal mismanagement in any corner of state government. He loathes it. And he takes full advantage of his position to do something about it. Just ask the folks at the South Florida Water Management District.
Though most of his trustee appointments across the state have been slow in coming, Scott made a point of replacing trustees who allowed Walker, at Edison's helm for 20 years, to skate through his evaluations either by deliberately turning a blind eye or failing to do their homeworrk.
In early November he appointed insurance agent Brian G. Chapman Jr., retired attorney Starnes-Bilotti, attorney and professor Pamela A. Seay, and certified public accountant Sankey "Eddie" Webb III.
Ann Berlam, trustee and board vice chairwoman, was just about to introduce a motion to ask the governor to accelerate the appointments when Scott came through.
Said Berlam, "I think it's important that the governor, one, filled the vacancy and two, appointed people to the seats where there was a reappointment ..."
After Edison's trustees fell asleep at the switch, the governor is unlikely to abandon his push to keep Florida universities and colleges fiscally sound and relevant for the workplace. The trouble at the college, bad as it is -- still at least $1 million away from solution -- might ultimately serve a higher purpose. Perhaps that was the early warning bell the governor heard that so focused his attention on the state college and university system's secret society.
Make no mistake, Scott's prodding finger is stirring change behind the scenes at all 11 of Florida's universities and all 28 of its community and state colleges.
This is an opinion column: Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.
