Another Case Study in Private Inurement and Excess Benefit: Massachusettes IG Issues Report on Westfield State University Prez’s Spending

From the Boston Globe, 31 July 2014:

Former Westfield State University president Evan S. Dobelle improperly used hundreds of thousands of dollars from school accounts to pay for such things as frequent personal trips, electronic equipment for personal use, and a portrait of himself, then covered his tracks by filing false reports, according to a scathing new report by the state inspector general.  The report cited more than 20 examples of Dobelle’s misconduct during his stormy six-year tenure, many of them deliberate and repeated and some potentially illegal. In 2013, Inspector General Glenn A. Cunha writes, Dobelle brought friends and family on a university trip to Cuba, urging them to falsely claim to be Westfield State officials.

The full report, useful for teaching runaway private inurement, excess benefit and the failure of board oversight, is available here.   Incidentally, Westfield State University is a public institution.  Most public universities don’t apply for recognition under IRC 501(c)(3); as a result, the prohibitions against private inurement and excess benefit are probably not applicable to the University.  But the University’s foundation, through which most of the spending occurred, is a private entity exempt under IRC 501(c)(3) and subject to the prohibitions.  The Globe reports that the former President is suing just about everybody involved in his resulting ouster; he should probably get some good tax advice in a hurry. 

dkj