WESTFIELD – Following the resignation of now former Vice President of Administration and Finance Milton Santiago last week in the wake of the spending scandal involving former President Dr. Evan Dobelle, the Westfield State University Board of Trustees continued their march toward fiscal austerity yesterday.
The board unanimously approved a measure to continue reducing the number of credit cards issued to university personel, a number that was at one time over 40, and to formally adopt a new procurement card program.
The foundation was also laid for shoring up the school’s policies involving travel, and Chairman John Flynn III said the body will revisit the matter at it’s meeting in February.
Westfield State Budget Director John Wesolowski came before the board and offered his two cents on cutting back on school credit cards, a measure that was proposed at a meeting of the board’s Finance Subcommittee in Sturbridge last month, a meeting which Flynn concluded by saying that “time is up.”
“Everyone at the institution needs to understand that this is a priority. This is going to change,” Flynn said at that meeting, on the need to alter the school’s credit card and travel policies. “I dont want to rush to judgement… but we are going to move (On December 12).”
And move they did.
“It is our intent to eliminate the credit card program by the end of this fiscal year,” Wesolowski said last night. “We are one third of the way through eliminating our credit cards at this time. We are down to 24 cards, and there have been offers to take more credit cards out of the process, as well.”
Wesolowski added that Westfield State now has the second fewest cards of any of it’s “sister universities” in the state system.
Flynn, the chief administrative officer of the Massachusetts State Polic, noted during the Sturbridge meeting that he is aware of only two credit cards that are used by the State Police, an organization which employs around 3,000 people.
In place of the credit cards, Wesolowski announced a plan for the school to adopt a procurement card system which was subsequently approved. Similar procurement card systems have been in place at other state institutions for some time now, and are commonplace in corporate America.
“It’ll allow us to aggregate a lot of the small purchases, which will help to more effectively and efficiently process payment,” he said. “It also has an extensive number of controls and limitations in place so that it is very restrictive as to who can use it, where it can be used, and for what type of expenses.”
“It’s a great step,” said Flynn, after the meeting. “The procurement card is much better for us.”
“The (travel) policy will be ratified in February,” he said. “We agree to the principle of it. It’s great progress. We’re satisfied.”
“Milton’s resignation gives whoever becomes the permanent president the choice,” he said regarding the eventual appointment of a successor to Santiago as VP of Administration and Finance. “(Interim President) Dr. (Elizabeth) Preston has put out focus groups to figure out what skillset we should search for for the next president. We’ll start by identifying a core group of folks internally.”
