Security institute controls pledged

Friday, Sept. 29, 2006 | 7:30 a.m.

On the heels of a critical internal audit, UNLV President David Ashley pledged Thursday to bring accountability to the troubled Institute for Security Studies and steer it back on an academic course.

"I do believe it's important we get in front of those issues," Ashley said after reviewing the audit, which concluded that record-keeping at the secretive counterterrorism institute was shoddy and often nonexistent.

"We need to manage it more directly and more firmly."

Ashley said he doesn't believe an independent audit outside UNLV - as some regents have sought - is needed to help him accomplish that goal.

The UNLV audit, he said, can serve as the basis for "setting up corrective action."

"I believe we have the appropriate guidance to move forward and make the necessary changes in the institute's management," he said. "I have absolute faith in the quality of the people who performed the internal audit."

Ashley found support Thursday from university system Regent Steve Sisolak, who had been pushing for an independent audit of the institute, which has received $8.9 million in grants, mostly in federal funding, over the past three years.

Sisolak, who heads the regents' audit committee, said he now believes that any further audits would be fruitless because of the dearth of records on file at the institute to document its business dealings.

Nevada System of Higher Education auditors conducting a separate financial review have expressed their frustration to him about the lack of record-keeping, he said.

"In terms of accountability, this is about as bad as it gets," Sisolak said. "There's no documentation for somebody to analyze."

A similar conclusion was reached by UNLV auditors.

Gerry Bomotti, the university's vice president for finance and business, said his auditors had trouble finding supporting documentation for many of the institute's dealings.

"That's a big problem," he said. "It's our belief that they need to go back and clean up those activities to the best extent they can. They're spending public dollars. They have an obligation to go back and put documents in their files that explain why they made certain transactions."

Ashley, who took the reins of UNLV on July 1, has moved to improve oversight of the institute.

On Monday, retired Army Gen. Scott B. Smith, the former chief executive of the private Western Research Institute in Wyoming, will take over as the UNLV institute's executive director. He replaces Tom Williams, the man critics fault for allowing the organization to stray from its academic mission.

The institute also officially will move under the direct control of the university from its current home in the UNLV Research Foundation, a private fundraising organization that does not have to follow the university's more stringent rules of operation.

And Mark Rudin, UNLV's interim vice president of research and Graduate College dean, has found a job at another university. Rudin, who oversaw Williams, has been the institute's staunchest defender at UNLV.

Ashley said he wants to open the institute's doors not only to faculty, but to graduate students as well.

"We should have avenues here for graduate students to do research through an institute such as the (institute), and that certainly needs to be bolstered from where it is right now," he said.

Bomotti said the institute's aborted master's degree program in crisis and emergency management was "sort of planned on the fly.

"Many assumptions were made in the planning that turned out to be erroneous," he said.

The program, which stalled after one pilot class that graduated 17 students, is being revived. The university hired a new director this month to bring the program up to academic standards.

Troubles within the master's program, Bomotti said, were indicative of the audit's overall concerns about the lack of direction and focus at the institute.

But the good news, Bomotti said, is that the institute has "substantially addressed" its record-keeping deficiencies.

"There's nothing here that can't be fixed with some hard work and a management that is clearly paying full-time attention to these activities," he said.

Most of the enhanced accounting procedures, Bomotti added, have been implemented within the past six months.

In June the Sun published a story raising questions about the institute's exaggerated claims of accomplishments and its failure to meet key goals, especially on the academic front.

The internal UNLV audit was prompted by the Sun's report. A separate university system audit is expected to be completed later this year.