When the Tennessee Board of Regents interviewed James Hefner to take the reins at Tennessee State University, they knew he had a reputation for poor spending and budgeting—but they hired him anyway.
In 1991, Hefner was effectively fired from Jackson State University in Jackson, Miss., amid public allegations that he continually overspent the university's budget and overdrafted its bank account by millions of dollars. Fighting to save his candidacy for the TSU post, Hefner lashed out against the press and his detractors at the Mississippi College Board while trying to reassure the Tennessee Board of Regents that he was the right man for the position.
"I am a financially responsible person," wrote Hefner, a former economics professor, in a letter to Otis Floyd, then the chancellor of the Tennessee Board of Regents. "And if given the opportunity to preside over Tennessee State, I will do an excellent job."
Today, Hefner is again fighting to save his career after the release of two scathing audits that again call into question his ability to run the business of a university. Among the audits' most damaging findings is that Hefner awarded scholarships, even though he should have known that there was no money to fund them. In addition, the report found that Hefner did nothing to keep the TSU Foundation, whose board he served on, from running itself into the ground. Finally, in what has been the most provocative finding to date, the audit also cited Hefner for repeatedly lying about whether the school's food service company, Aramark, gave him Super Bowl tickets or whether he paid for them. After several different accounts of how he acquired the 2000 and 2001 tickets, Hefner finally acknowledged to paying only a fraction of their worth several years after the fact. He and his wife also attended the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta as guests of Aramark.
For Hefner, the current controversy must seem like a disturbing case of déjà vu. Thirteen years ago, Hefner was forced out as president of Jackson State University in the wake of a damaging audit chronicling serious cases of financial mismanagement during his seven-year tenure. In January 1991, the 12-member Mississippi College Board voted unanimously to replace Hefner with an interim president. According to Jackson's daily newspaper, The Clarion-Ledger, one of Hefner's supporters began yelling at board members after the vote, and two security guards were summoned.
The board had rebuked Hefner after the audit of the 6,800-student university found that Jackson State had outspent its budget every year since Hefner became president in 1984. The report also found that the historically black college overdrew its bank account by $3.58 million, prompting the bank to stop covering overdrafts. "Numerous plans have been submitted over the past seven years to solve the financial problems," the Mississippi College Board wrote in a statement then. "There was no indication that any effective action was taken."
In a letter to the Tennessee Board of Regents, Hefner addressed the bitter controversy that sunk his presidency at Jackson State. "My reputation speaks for itself, and it is disconcerting to be in the midst of an environment in which good deeds are not appreciated and moving an institution forward is not rewarded," he wrote. In a subsequent memo to the Board of Regents here, Hefner conceded that the university did overspend its budget, but he noted that it generated excess revenue during those periods to offset budget overruns. In addition, he blamed the college's bank overdrafts on "the lack of attention by the Fiscal Affairs Office and prior banking practices."
But, in what should have been another red flag to the Tennessee Board of Regents, even Hefner's supporters criticized his lack of attentiveness during routine reference checks. According to notes in Hefner's Board of Regents personnel file, Thomas Pointier, Hefner's vice president for fiscal affairs at Jackson State and a longtime colleague of Hefner's, told Tennessee education officials that "Hefner is not detail oriented, that he needs to have detailed people around him and that Hefner tends not to have time for details." Pointier concluded that while Hefner is an adept fundraiser and dedicated to students, he is "naive," and would "need an in-house person who is a manager."
Even today, former members of the Jackson State University Board of Trustees who served with Hefner remember him as a good president who nevertheless neglected the more intricate managerial aspects of his job. "Jim Hefner is a fine man and has a lot of potential, but if he had any problems it was with the details," recalls Will Hickman, who served as president of the board during the end of Hefner's tenure. "He was just too busy dealing with the other parts of his functions."
William Jones, who served on the board with Hickman, echoes the criticism. "Dr. Hefner certainly had the ability and background to be a good college president, but he didn't surround himself with enough qualified people to handle the many, many details that go along with being president."
But Hefner's hiring despite these lapses can perhaps be explained in part by his role, before he became TSU president, in recommending reaccreditation for TSU when he chaired a visiting committee of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
Also, during the time before Hefner was hired, the TSU campus was rife with unrest and protests from students who resented efforts to attract more whites to the school. During his visits, Hefner apparently seemed undaunted by the challenges.
The late Otis Floyd, who was chancellor of the Board of Regents at the time Hefner was hired at TSU, wasn't blind to the episodes at Jackson State University, says Rich Rhoda, the executive director of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission who was Floyd's assistant at the time. But Floyd felt those issues could be overcome.
"Dr. Floyd was aware of the issues at Jackson State, but he truly saw Dr. Hefner as a proven administator who could work with campus factions," Rhoda says. "And if Dr. Hefner had any gaps or weaknesses in his ability, Dr. Floyd felt he could help resolve those."
But, for the second time in his career, last week's pair of audits call into question Hefner's managerial competency. While there is nothing chronicled in the reports that approaches the naked greed and abuse of power that led to former University of Tennessee president John Shumaker's downfall, the audits continually reprimand Hefner for neglecting important issues that threatened to put the university and its students at risk. The most serious of these issues deals with the TSU Foundation scholarships. The audit found that, under Hefner's watch, the foundation awarded as many as 85 of its 250 scholarships to students who failed to meet all of the criteria for aid, adding up to $226,804 for a three-and-a-half-year period. Foundation personnel told auditors that Hefner made exceptions to the stated criteria based on students' extracurricular activities or leadership skills—even though the foundation did not provide for any exceptions.
Most damaging, however, according to the audit, is that Hefner recklessly awarded foundation scholarships "without regard for available funds." In addition, as a member of the foundation's board, Hefner knew—or should have known—of the foundation's fiscal insolvency. In 1999, Hefner received a memo from the foundation's then executive director informing him that the academic scholarship account had a negative balance of more than $250,000. Hefner told auditors that he did not remember reading such a memo. Regardless, the audit found that as Hefner selected students to receive scholarships through the TSU Foundation, he never requested information about how much money he could award or how many students' scholarships could be funded.
"It appears the university President's focus was on encouraging honors students to attend TSU, without regard for the costs of the scholarship being offered," the auditors conclude.
Hefner's numerous supporters, who include black state legislators and Metro Council members, along with the local chapter of the NAACP, say that the TSU president is being reprimanded for providing opportunities for more students to receive education. But the deeper question the audits raise is whether Hefner has the necessary skills to run a major public university. Attorney George Barrett, who sued the entire state higher education system in 1968 for maintaining a defacto pattern of segregation, says that Hefner should not have been hired in the first place. "It was a mistake to hire him; I don't think he was competent," says Barrett, who was preparing to appear as a guest on a Fisk University radio program. "Here's a man who is an economist, and he has difficulty running a school."
Last week, Hefner penned a letter to the TSU community, citing his many accomplishments, including a sharp increase in enrollment and a major boost in research funding. Thirteen years ago, he saved his career by writing a similar letter to the Board of Regents. It remains to be seen whether this latest attempt at self-preservation will pan out.
