UNLV, former finance chief reach agreement

Monday, June 13, 2005 | 9:29 a.m.

A former UNLV administrator agreed to drop his lawsuit against the university in exchange for having his contract bought out, according to a settlement agreement obtained by the Sun Friday.

The then University and Community College System of Nevada paid Tony Flores, UNLV's former vice president for finance, $124,700 for the remaining year of his contract under the terms signed in January.

In a lawsuit filed in August 2004, Flores alleged that UNLV President Carol Harter had demoted and then fired him for opposition to a plan to divert research money through the university's private Research Foundation in order to avoid giving part of the money back to the state.

Until the 2005 Legislature, the state's institutions were required to give 25 percent of the money they received for overhead costs back to the state.

Flores said Friday that he was fired because he refused to remain silent about the plan, which he called a "shell game."

"She was trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the Legislature by running projects through the Research Foundation," Flores said.

Now working on remodeling a home on the California coast, Flores said he was satisfied with the buy-out, which is all he ever wanted. He said he is taking some time off while he decides what to do next, but that he will likely not re-enter the field of higher education.

UNLV lawyer Richard Linstrom said the university just paid Flores what they owed him under contract. The university also dropped its termination proceedings against Flores in the settlement because he agreed to resign.

A December audit found that UNLV had never followed through with the plan to divert the money, and Harter at the time said she was just examining ways to keep research money at the university in order to foster economic development.

The newly named Nevada System of Higher Education advocated this session for the institutions to keep all of the research overhead money, which the Legislature approved.