The state attorney general has been asked to launch a criminal investigation in the wake of auditors' findings that Morgan State University made up to $2.4 million in "questionable" and duplicate payments to a prominent contracting company.
The auditors, who work for the legislature, found extensive problems with how Morgan State managed some of its projects - circumventing rules governing state approval and execution of contracts.
Looking at other areas of Morgan management, the audit report discovered that the Northeast Baltimore university had overpaid two employees a total of $121,400, belatedly identified the overpayments and did not refer the matter to the attorney general for criminal investigation.
Legislators said they were disturbed by the audit findings and expect to question the university when hearings on its budget begin next week. "My initial reaction is, these are very serious findings that deserve strong scrutiny on the part of the legislature," Del. John L. Bohanan Jr., the St. Mary's County Democrat who chairs the House Appropriations Committee's education subpanel, said yesterday after the report was released.
Bohanan predicted that "there will be strong sentiment from some members of the legislature" to restrict Morgan's independence from the state's university system, though he does not advocate that approach. The vice chairman of Morgan's Board of Regents, Martin R. Resnick, said he is worried about such repercussions. "One small infraction like this could do something like that," Resnick said. "We have tried so hard to be able to control our own business."
The audit focused largely on one contract with Whiting Turner Contracting Co. that included a $3.1 million "allowance" that the university used without state approval to pay the contract for cost overruns on other projects. That was initially reported by The Sun last month.
Bruce A. Myers, the chief legislative auditor, said yesterday that in his 10 years in the post, he never had seen a multimillion-dollar allowance written into a public contract without plans on how to spend the funds.
Resnick said the regents were assured in a meeting with Morgan President Earl S. Richardson last week that Peeter Kiik, Morgan's director of design and construction, "acted independently," without the knowledge of Richardson or Kiik's boss, Abraham Moore, the university's vice president of finance. Kiik resigned Jan. 21 after the legislative auditor determined that the college violated state regulations in its dealings with Whiting Turner.
