Searchlight New Mexico investigation shines light on spending at WNMU

SCOTT BROCATO:

Talk to us about the story and the expenses.

 JOSHUA BOWLING:

 So it came to my attention that the senior officials at Western New Mexico University were really running up quite large tabs on the taxpayers’ dime. This is a university whose budget is in the ballpark of $74-75 million for the year. A large portion of that comes from appropriations from the state capitol; there’s also tuition, there are donors and grants. But the lion’s share of this is taxpayer dollars. And as I started looking through the university’s financial records, I saw a very troubling pattern that really raise your eyebrows: of nearly $30,000 on luxury furniture from a very well-known institution in Santa Fe, to nearly six figures in international travel to Zambia and Madrid and Athens in the last five years.

SCOTT BROCATO:

When asked about the expenses, WNMU’s president, Joseph Shepard, told Searchlight New Mexico to think of them as investments.

JOSHUA BOWLING:

His response is that you need to think of these things in the intangible. Sure, we’ve spent nearly $30,000 in furniture that we put in the president’s home where he lives on the university’s dime, but that furniture plays a critical, unspoken role in fundraising. He put it to me in terms of, you can’t really fundraise effectively from the president’s home if you just had IKEA furniture. You need something that looks presidential.

Switching gears onto the travel side of things, the justification I heard was: even though International students make up less than 2% of our total student body at the moment, we’re really fostering connections, and we’re showing everybody that the world is bigger than they think it is. You really can’t put a dollar amount on interactions like that.

And I hear that line of reasoning, but one thing that I made sure to clarify in the story is that we’ve never done the math to back that up. We have never brought in an economist or a consultant to do a cost-benefits analysis and see if this exorbitantly priced furniture and these multi-thousand-dollar trips really are paying off. Nobody has been able to do that and to prove the university right.

SCOTT BROCATO:

Well, over the summer, the article also mentions that the university raised tuition by 3%, with Shepard leading the push for the increase, which is underscored, the article says, critics’ concerns that the high standard of living is coming at the expense of low-income students. What was his reason for increasing the tuition then?

JOSHUA BOWLING:

So the reasoning at the time was that there were a number of measures from the state, up in Santa Fe, that mandated raises for University employees, there is record levels of inflation, there was the cost of providing healthcare and paying a large percentage of employees healthcare premiums, and that all of that was really causing the university to reassess its financial situation and need to raise tuition by 3%. But critics and former employees were quick to push back on that and say, well, wait a second: all of those things can be true, but at the same time, maybe if we weren’t spending. $30,000 almost on furniture, we could really reevaluate our spending in a more meaningful way.

SCOTT BROCATO:

The article also mentions that Shepard’s wife, Valerie Plame, also profited.

 JOSHUA BOWLING:

So if you go through financial records for Western New Mexico, you find a number of expenses that are in her name. A couple that stood out to me were nearly $4100 from Woodland Direct, which is, as I understand it, an online company that sells custom fireplaces; nearly $1500 on a sofa from the arts and crafts website Etsy; and a smattering of Amazon charges. Some of those charges are also in Shepard’s name, and there are individual Amazon charges that go north of $1000 pretty quickly. Some of them are nearly $2000, but that’s not immediately clear from looking at the records what exactly those are.

When I asked President Shepard about these expenses in his wife’s name, he reminded me that she is technically a university employee as the First Lady of Western New Mexico University; and as he told me, like any other employee, has the ability to give reimbursed for business expenses.

RESPONSE FROM WNMU:

KRWG Public Media reached out to Western New Mexico University for a response to this story. Julia Morales, vice president for compliance and communications for WNMU, emailed this response:

Western New Mexico University takes its fiduciary responsibility to taxpayers and the state seriously. The university adheres to rigorous fiscal standards to ensure that all dollars are maximized for the benefit of its students, faculty, staff, community and the citizens of New Mexico. This oversight includes not only its internal procedures, but also its board of regents and is independently audited every year.

While the items addressed in the story are lacking needed context, most will be addressed by the independent audit (requested by Dr. Shepard). All of the items have been previously presented, discussed and vetted with the Regents.

Information in the story that characterizes the role of Dr. Shepard’s wife Valerie Plame, is not accurate. She is not an employee of the university, while she does make purchases on behalf of the university, she does not have an expense account. She receives no payment, or any other kind of renumeration from the University for volunteerism that has brought in numerous lectures and patrons for the benefit of the university.

Through good management of the fiscal resources provided, University enrollment is up 6% this year with a 36% increase in freshmen class admissions; foundation resources have increased by over 400% since 2011; the University’s Master of Social Work degree is ranked among the top 10 online programs in the nation; WNMU’s Master of Business Administration is nationally ranked; the University is fiscally sound with no major findings on all audits over the last 12 years.