The Florida Board of Governors’ inspector general’s office says Florida Gulf Coast University violated state law on two separate occasions over the last year.
The investigation was prompted by eight allegations that were first brought to the FGCU Audit Office. State law mandates that person be deemed a whistle-blower and that his or her name remain confidential.
According to the 81-page report, only two of the eight allegations were sustained.
The first violation occurred when FGCU elected its Faculty Senate president as the Board of Trustees' vice president, which doesn't comply with a Board of Governors’ regulation.
The second violation broke the Florida Sunshine Law, when two trustees met with the school's president and provost but they didn’t do it in public.
The report says, at this meeting last July 7, Board of Trustees Chairman Dudley Goodlette, then-Vice Chairman Shawn Felton, Provost Ronald Toll and President Wilson Bradshaw spoke about the university’s strategic planning process. Goodlette says it was an inadvertent oversight on his part.
“There was nothing we discussed that we wouldn't have been more than happy to discuss in an open meeting,” Goodlette said. “I should have been aware that talking to the chairman of the strategic planning committee, the president and the provost should have been a noticed meeting.”
To adhere to the state’s Sunshine Law, public boards or commissions must be open to the public; reasonable notice of such meetings must be given; and minutes of the meetings must be taken and promptly recorded.
The report states the Inspector General referred the case to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, but the FDLE declined to do a criminal investigation.
Regardless, Felton resigned from his vice chairman position last week. The Faculty Senate elects a new president in two weeks.