Two top-paid state hires on hot seat for U of I clout list

"The buck stops with Chancellor (Richard) Herman for the Urbana campus and with me for the entire University which includes the Urbana campus."

Actually, a lot of bucks stop with both Herman and Joe White, the president of University of Illinois who wrote the above statement to me in an e-mail.

About a million dollars a year to pay their salaries, which are the two highest salaries paid in Illinois to any government employees.

More than the governor, the mayor, the Chicago police chief, state Supreme Court justices or anybody else (unless you count U of I's football coach.)

Considering last week's fiasco for the state's flagship university in which White, Herman and other top officials were implicated in an admissions scandal, I thought you might be interested to know just how much both of the top men at U of I are paid.

After all, you and I pay their salaries because they are state employees.

Chancellor Herman's total compensation last year was $427,500 according to state records.

President White made $555,000 from his public service employment.

And now both men are right in the middle of a corruption case - the very kind of situation we pay them all that money to keep away from ... not mentioning that we hope they are teaching our children ethical behavior.

At first when the story broke that U of I kept a "secret clout list" of politically connected student-applicants, Dr. White was defensive. He said on WGN Radio that there was no "secret clout list," that the term was manufactured by the Chicago Tribune.

But then in the next breath White described what the U of I did have as precisely what a clout list is.

"There's nothing wrong if the governor or if Sen. Durbin or a donor to the university says 'Hey, I have an interest in this applicant,'" White said. "There's nothing wrong with our knowing that."

"There's nothing wrong with tracking those expressions of inquiry ... we do track inquiries about admissions ... there are 160 people on that list this year."

Call it what you want but that is a clout list and it was a secret since nobody knew about it.

Dr. White says that when an alum or politician flags a certain applicant, he makes sure the university admission officials know about it.

"That does not constitute either pressure for admission or an opinion on my part that a person should be admitted," he contends ... obviously having forgotten what it is like to get a note from the boss.

I asked the university president if he has received such an inquiry from Gov. Quinn since he took over after Rod Blagojevich's impeachment conviction.

"No" said White in a terse, one-word answer.

Then I asked him if he is expects "any disciplinary action and/or firings as a result of the apparent preferential treatment in a few cases?"

"Our focus is on reviewing Urbana admissions and doing whatever is required to ensure public trust," he told me. "Any personnel actions would follow review."

That review will officially begin today at U of I with a meeting of top university officials to sort through the mess.

Might the president and chancellor themselves be in jeopardy considering their involvement in the clout list and White's admission that the bucks stop with them?

"Chancellor Herman reports to me and I report to the board of trustees. Discipline on any issue would occur in that line of authority."

Here is one question that the university trustees might want to ask Dr. White, considering what we know so far: do you think maybe you were stretched too thin to see the admission corruption unfolding and to run the university?

You see, White has some other things vying for his attention.

He is on the Chicago 2016 Evaluation Committee for Chicago's bid to host the Olympic Games. He serves as a director or trustee on a few corporate boards, including Equity Residential in Chicago and the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment research in Michigan.

U of I is also not White's only paid position. He makes more than $200,000 a year serving on the board of directors of Kelly Services, the big temp firm.

So, wanting to know if perhaps he was distracted by other things and just missed the growing clout list sore, I asked White if "the presidency of U of I a full-time position and if so, how are you able to serve on corporate boards for pay?"

"Being president of U of I is full time - more 24/7 and most of 365 than anything I have experienced," he said. "At the time I joined U of I from the University of Michigan, I was serving on boards and requested U of I Board of Trustee approval, which I secured in writing, to continue. My service complies with the University's Conflict of Interest and Conflict of Commitment policies."

I'm sure all of that is true.

But now the university and White are facing a conflict of a different kind.

A conflict of corruption.

And a crisis of confidence.

• Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC 7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by e-mail at chuckgoudie@gmail.com