But aren't all legal fees approved by the IHL Board?  I think I've read about significantly smaller amounts (under $5,000) approved for all of the universities on a regular basis.

Seems like there are four scenarios that have been raised about this, the two that have already been discussed:

1.  Conspiracy Theory - idea that the board colluded to keep the timing of the legal expense from the public until after the one-year contract extension was announced.

2.  Reporter's Thames Theory - idea that Shelby himself kept the timing of the legal expense from the public until his contract was extended for a year.

There are another two that are perhaps corollaries of the first two:

C1.  Is it possible the board supporters, under the old leadership, had either promised Shelby or were going to attempt to "bury" these legal expenses as board expenses and that the new IHL leadership both denied and "outed" the expenses?  Timing would support this as well.

C2.  Is it possible that Shelby, with his history of telling the board less than whole truths, deceived them yet again until after he received his extension?  This idea begs the question as to why the board was not more on top of these major expenses and what kind of guidance Shelby was getting from the USM attorney and his VP of Finance attorney on the matter.  How (and where) were the accrued expenses reported for over a year?

Maybe this is not a helpful line of thought but I'm on my first coffee and newspaper and read the same mini-article that Reporter did. 

Happy 4th everyone.

i assume you're referring to when the bill was submitted. i don't know about that.

This really underscores the fact that Thames wasted about a half million dollars that could have been spent on instruction when he pursued his egotistical little vendetta against the professors. Had IHL paid the bill, it could be argued that nothing came out of funds earmarked for instruction. But when you get down to the brass tacks of it, every cent that goes to USM is earmarked for instruction ... until it's diverted into bloated salaries for unqualified lawyers with no experience whatsoever in operating universities.

Invictus wrote:

---

This really underscores the fact that Thames wasted about a half million dollars that could have been spent on instruction when he pursued his egotistical little vendetta against the professors. 

---

You bet. the funds the university squandered on the S/G inappropriate termination attempt debacle could have been spent on instruction. That would have been a good place to spend it.

It could have also been spent on faculty research (I need not mention the numerous ways it could have been used in this capacity).

Another use for the wasted funds might have been augmenting our paultry funded and non- competitive graduate assistantships.

Finally, the funds might have been used for an across-the-board augmentation of the salaries of staff (e.g., secretaries) or faculty. What a morale builder that would have been. The MIDAS scheme would pale by comparison.

USM would have been better off using the wasted funds to establish yet a third student newspaper, resurface its streets one more time, or purchase new lightpoles. The taxpayer and the legislature will wise up one of the days.

 

 

Invictus wrote:

---

Ticked wrote: The taxpayer and the legislature will wise up one of the days. I have lived in Mississippi for 50 of my 52 years. I have voted in Mississippi for 34 years. I'm still waiting for the taxpayers & the legislature to wise up. I don't expect it to happen during my allotted time on this sphere. In fact, I kinda think that the average Mississippi voters expect public officials to be crooks & that when a public official appears to be honest, the voters figure s/he's simply too inept to be a good crook.

---

Invictus,

if the choice were between a candidate who was corrupt but smart vs. one who was honest but dumb, all other things being equal, which would you vote for? I believe that Louisiana has been in that position once or twice.

Weighing In wrote:

---

 If it turns out they let power overtake brain cells, we just get rid of them

---

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

However, in LA you at least sometimes get corrupt but entertaining.  In MS we never get the entertaining part.

I'll also note that, contrary to what our high school civics teachers tried to get us to believe, it is perfectly acceptable not to vote.

USM Sympathizer wrote:

---

This comment leads me to wonder: does USM still even have a "risk manager"?  Or did that position disappear when what's-his-name was given his walking papers?  If the latter, then doesn't that fact imply that a "risk manager" was not needed in the first place?

---

Neither Aubrey nor Horace needed a "risk manager" beyond using the services of the university attorney (Lee Gore).  Only SFT needed to add the services of a Kentucky carpetbagger to his henchcrew.