One year after a state audit found $39-million in undocumented expenditures at Florida A&M University, the institution is on track to put its fiscal house in order, according to a news release issued today by the state university system’s Board of Governors.
A task force, created by the board to overhaul financial operations at the university, is scheduled to release its final report next Monday. The report is expected to say that the institution has fixed more than 90 percent of the bookkeeping problems discovered in the 2007 audit.
New measures, which will be specified in next week’s report, are meant to give the university’s Board of Trustees more information and oversight of financial matters.
The audit of the university’s spending in the 2006 fiscal year identified many accounting discrepancies, including a $2.7-million inconsistency in student-aid transactions, missing equipment worth another $2.7-million, and misplaced records of $1.8-million in athletics-ticket sales.
Margaret Lynn Pappas, a member of the Board of Governors and chairwoman of the task force, praised President James H. Ammons, who took office in July 2007 in the wake of the audit and news that the university’s accreditor had placed it on a six-month probation.
“President Ammons and his administration have been persistent and aggressive in putting corrective measures in place,” Ms. Pappas said in the news release. Now it will be up to the university’s Board of Trustees to ensure that it follows through, she added. —Eric Kelderman




