Regents duel over calls for audits

Friday, April 15, 2005 | 9:06 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Two Northern Nevada regents verbally sparred over whether to audit UNR's parking operations during a Board of Regents audit committee hearing Thursday morning, prompting other regents to raise the issue of how and when an individual regent may request an audit.

Regent Howard Rosenberg, an art professor at UNR, said he requested the audit in response to complaints from students, faculty and alumni that parking charges at the Reno institution were too high.

His constituents want to know how their parking fees are being used, Rosenberg said, and an audit would be able to clear up rumors that the money was being inappropriately used or funneled to other university functions.

Students pay $65 to $320 a year to park in a limited number of designated spaces.

But Regent Doug Hill, chairman of the audit committee, said there was no justification for an audit, and that the State of Nevada Employees Association, the workers' union circulating the rumors, had never been able to support the allegations.

"My concern is that this is being used as a weapon for political purposes with no basis," said Hill, an attorney and accountant from Sparks.

The internal audit department within the University and Community College System of Nevada has limited resources to conduct additional audits, Hill said, and the audits are costly and disruptive to the units under scrutiny. He said he didn't want to set a precedent where anyone at anytime could request an audit and use it as a "tool of retribution."

Rosenberg, however, said the sheer number of complaints he received and the variety of people making the complaints was justification enough for a full audit of all parking operations.

"I'm not concerned with SNEA (the State of Nevada Employees Association), I'm concerned with people on my campus," Rosenberg said. "...I don't know how anyone can object to this. It will put a great deal of difficulty to rest."

Regents tabled the request during the meeting at Western Nevada Community College in Carson City because of persisting questions about what the audit would include. But the back-and-forth spat between Rosenberg and Hill caused other regents on the committee, specifically Thalia Dondero, Dorothy Gallagher and Linda Howard, to question how regents may request audits.

A request from Howard to audit all employees to verify they had the degrees required for their job was similar glossed over during the committee hearing. Regents made it mandatory last spring for institutions to verify the credentials of all new hires, but Howard said she was concerned about employees already in the system.

An audit would only be able to look at employees hired in the last few years, Sandi Cardinal, assistant vice chancellor of finance, said, because degree requirements are dictated in job advertisements and the system doesn't retain those documents beyond a three-year period.