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Message From the President

March 2010

    

Random Thoughts and Notes from the President

Stimulus and Pending A-133

It was last spring when the first federal stimulus dollars started dribbling, or, in some cases, pouring into colleges and universitites.  We all entered into a new world of Federal Reporting Websites and additional State Reporting requirements for these stimulus funds.  Whether we call it Stimulus or ARRA, the new funds have created a unique year for us.

The ARRA funding came to colleges and universities in many ways; as a direct award from a federal agency; as a federal sub-award from another state agency; as a federal appropriation to the state passed on to the institution; or as a directed appropriation to the institution.  With this new money came the phrase "transparency," and a series of documents noted as "reporting requirements" set to aid in meeting the transparency requirement.  Those of us fortunate enough to receive the federal stimulus funds were at once appreciative of the money but perplexed at the task of interpreting the reporting requirements.

Colleges and Universitites are generally not novices when it comes to the management of federal funds and have systems in place to record the sponsored expenditures and account for cash regardless of its source.  But the intensely-focused vigilance placed upon the accounting and reporting requirements of the stimulus funds has created a new phenomenon - almost a sense of hyper-vigilance.

In June of 2009 the Office of Management and Budget released OMB Circular A-133 Compliance Supplement #1 .  This supplement is aimed specifically at the compliance review of ARRA funds.  As we begin to close-out our respective fiscal years, external auditors will arrive with directives to audit 100% of the federal stimulus dollars.  Hopefully, our hyper-vigilance will pay off during our A-133 audits.

UBIT Audits

In the May 10, 2010 edition of Inside Higher Ed, Doug Lederman reported that the Internal Revenue Service is conducting more than 30 reviews on individual colleges and universities, which are focused on executive compensation and the payment (or nonpayment) of tax on unrelated business income.

Mr. Lederman also reported that the reviews come on the heels of a 2008 request for information from the IRS where the agency collected data from 400 colleges and universities in a broad questionnaire.  A preliminary report of the information collected from the questionnaire was released by the IRS on May 7.  The results include data from both public and private institutions of various sizes.  Mr. Lederman's full article can be found at this link.

Georgia Tech admitted to the Prestigious AAU

Congratulations to The Georgia Institute of Technology on becoming the 63rd member institution of the Association of American Universities.  High quality scholarship and research are hallmarks of the AAU.  Institutions invited into AAU must be recommended for membership and approved by a three-fourths vote of the organization's membership.

Bob Dixon, SACUBO President 
robert.dixon@okstate.edu