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May 27, 2009 in Idaho
UI professor questions money spent in New Mexico
The University of Idaho is spending nearly $400,000 a year to support three employees in New Mexico without any oversight, an electrical engineering professor at the school says.
“I’ve asked the question of three different university administrators, ’Why do we have an operation in New Mexico, and what are they doing?”’ David Egolf told the Lewiston Tribune. “And I’ve never gotten an answer.”
The money for the work in the Albuquerque office comes from the school’s Center for Advanced Microelectronics and Biomolecular Research, where a 2005 audit turned up possible wrongdoing.
Jack McIver, UI research vice president, said he is scrutinizing the New Mexico operation.
“I’m looking at what they’ve been doing over the last couple of years, and whether that is supportable,” McIver said. “I’ve always had problems in my previous jobs with remote sites.”
He said researchers in Albuquerque work mainly on computer chip designs.
The research center is being investigated by the Idaho attorney general’s office, said Bob Cooper, spokesman for the attorney general. He said he couldn’t comment on an active investigation.
The investigation stems from a 2005 audit that found evidence of possible theft, computer crimes, acceptance of rewards by state employees, and criminal nepotism. The audit also found employees were failing to disclose ownership interests in another chip maker, Concise Logic Inc., based in Albuquerque.
McIver said the university now monitors such public-private partnerships more closely.
Another problem came to light in 2007, when the center’s then-director, Gary Maki, was removed from that job after school records indicated what appeared to be an attempt to discredit a university researcher.
Maki wrote a draft of a letter and sent it to a colleague at NASA with instructions that it be sent back to the school “close to the way it is” so he could take it to then-university President Tim White and use it against the researcher. The center gets grant money from NASA.
The researcher, Kenneth Hass, obtained the letter and an e-mail through Idaho’s open records laws and made them public.
Egolf questions whether the money being sent to New Mexico is well spent considering budget cuts to the school due to the recession.
“I’m very fed up,” Egolf said, adding other faculty members agree with him but are afraid to come forward. “I’m the only person that speaks out. I’m a Vietnam veteran. I’m not afraid of anything.”
© Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Invasive mussels on the move toward Northwest 
DFrost on May 29 at 6:46 p.m.
The Albuquerque team makes more money than they cost the University. Far more. That’s why spending $400,000 a year to support a very productive design team is a good choice. It’s not any of David Egolf’s business and I suspect that’s why he doesn’t get any answers to his queries on the matter. Of course, that doesn’t really matter. This is in no way financially motivated or he would have bothered to find out how much that $400,000 investment returns to the University before complaining. Don’t think for a second that it’s mere coincidence that David Egolf sits in GJL 213 and Joe Hass sits in GJL 214.
As far as McIver’s comments about remote sites, many Universities maintain remote research sites. It’s a very common practice and it’s unfortunate McIver doesn’t see the value in it when so many large prestigious universities do. I wonder if he feels the same way about UI’s other remote research sites (like those in Boise) or if it’s just CAMBR he’s singling out for special consideration.
As for the investigation by the Idaho attorney general’s office, they came to CAMBR about 2 years ago to investigate 4 specific charges:
1) That ICS (a company associated with CAMBR) never paid rent for space they used. They were shown xerox copies of every check.
2) That our audit response was missing. How convenient that the auditor lost our response to the audit report. Fortunately we had the original electronic copy and printed one for them.
3) No time sheets were available during the period of time where the auditor claims an employee was double charging the University (for which she presented no evidence and seemed to rely on the fact that we couldn’t PROVE we weren’t lying on the time sheets). We provided them with those “supposedly nonexistant” time cards.
4) They were told we had no license agreement with ICS. We provided them with copies of the agreements signed by Gene Merrell (who represented the University in such matters at the time the agreements were signed).
Imagine coming into a situation as an investigator and finding out every fact provided by the auditor which you there to verify was blatantly false. We haven’t heard from the attorney general’s office since that time.
The Department of Defense came in and did their own audit and found no issues.
NASA did an audit and found no issues.
Simply put, the UI Audit was a joke. The CAMBR reply made that very obvious and pointed out the various flaws in painstaking detail. How convenient that the auditor “lost” it when it demonstrated clearly what a poor job she had done. I encourage any reporter interested to file a freedom of information act request for the orignal audit report, the CAMBR response and the final report. And if they tell you they can’t find the CAMBR response, I assure you that CAMBR has an electronic copy.
What about the issues the audit purported were present:
Possible theft? The auditor claimed employees had double charged time to both UofI and another company. Absolutely no evidence was put forth to support this. She simply stated, again with no evidence, that employees were lying on their time cards (or that the time cards didn’t exist which was also false).
Computer crimes? I honestly don’t remember any charges along this line, but it’s been two years since I read the report and it was so much obvious BS that I don’t remember all of it.
Acceptance of rewards by state employees? A boss is only allowed to spend a small amount of his personal money on employees at team building events (or any other time for that matter). Dr. Maki went over the prescribed limit. Someone call the attorney general!!!!
Failure to disclose ownership interests in another chip maker? Again, it’s been two years but I believe it was either $50 or $450 worth of stock. Either way, not exactly an amount that’s going to skew contract negotiations.
DFrost on May 29 at 6:48 p.m.
Criminal nepotism? We went out of our way to hire Joe’s wife. Many employers have such practices (and, in fact, the University did it again when they relocated Joe to Moscow). And one of our employee’s daughters worked at CAMBR during the summer (for 2 summers I believe) as an intern. Oh, and when Larry Brannen was involved with CAMBR HE hired his own SON to work here…. but that’s pretty much left off the list (and out of the audit report) since Larry is a VP and all… *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*.
And what about the letter in 2007. Well, we caught Joe Hass snooping around on the director’s computer. He had a script that ran every night at midnight and copied any files that had been modified during the previous 24 hours. Of course, he claims that it’s all an open system but the fact is, he was snooping around in Dr. Maki’s directory on the computer in Dr. Maki’s office which had absolutely no engineering data on it. Just because the security was such that the directory was essentially “unlocked” to anyone internal doesn’t make the behavior appropriate. This activity was reported to the University but they decided to not take action (there is some evidence Joe was performing this activity on behalf of the Auditor which would anger many people on campus if it were true).
At this point you might want to ask yourself what would happen to you at your job if you were caught snooping around through your boss’s confidential files.
Regardless, Dr. Maki has confidential information on his computer and had to notify certain entities that this information may have been compromised. This list included NASA. NASA then requested that Gary send another letter to the administration explaining to them why this was not “acceptable behavior.” He felt that it would carry more weight if it came from NASA itself, so they asked him to draft a letter that they could sign and return since Dr. Maki had a better understanding of UI policies/politics/etc. No big conspiracy here.
And why has no one heard the other side of the story? Because when Joe filed a lawsuit against the University the first thing their legal team did was to tell Dr. Maki to keep his mouth shut. Joe, his wife Martha, and his lawyer went around everywhere they could to drum up bad publicity to help their lawsuit and Dr. Maki was “strongly advised” by the UI legal team to not say a word. So while Joe has been drumming up as much bad publicity and half truths as possible in order to strengthen his “whistle-blowing” case against the University… Dr. Maki has had to sit back and bite his tongue.
You want the truth?
Ask Joe if he was snooping through the files in Dr. Maki’s personal file directory on the machine in his office. Ask him why? Ask him if anyone authorized him to perform such searches.
Ask Egolf why, when asked if he knew Dr. Maki and his group were coming to the UI (from New Mexico) he was quoted in a news article as saying “Over my dead body.” Dr. Maki and Dr. Egolf have never met. He’s obviously had a bone to pick for some time and it might be illuminating to find out why.
Ask McIver if he’s scrutinizing any other remote research sites or if CAMBR is just “special” in that respect. And why mess with a profitable research center?
Ask the auditor why the initial report had 12 issues for CAMBR to reply to, how she managed to lose our response and how the final audit somehow ended up with 13 issues (one of which had a “fabricated” response) and the portions of our responses that were present were quoted in the final report were heavily edited, leaving out very important details. Ask her if she authorized Joe Hass’s illegal activities. She admitted to several UI staff members that she had an “inside source” which she refused to identify. Ask her who it was.
Ask the reporters who have carried these stories why the fact that the DoD and NASA audits found NO issues is not reported alongside the UI Audit report.
kjhass on November 04 at 5:33 p.m.
I don’t believe a “DFrost” ever worked at CAMBR so the author of the comments above is either lying or hiding behind a fake name. Let me quote from a statement released by the University of Idaho:
“The allegations made by Dr. Gary Maki that Dr. Hass violated computer security policies or statutes, or that Dr. Hass attempted to sabotage any work at CAMBR…have been determined to be unfounded.”
Shortly after we filed our lawsuit the Idaho Attorney General’s office and the NASA Office of the Inspector General asked to meet with us. We cooperated fully with these organizations and told them exactly how we obtained the information that we provided to them. We have always told the complete and honest truth, and will continue to do so.