No state funds were used when UB illegally donated $2,560 to former Erie County Executive Chris Collins' political campaign in 2010, according to a letter from Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) Appeals Officer Geraldine Gauthier to The Spectrum.
Gauthier, who responded to a FOIL appeal filed by The Spectrum, said that UB has no records showing the names and dates of two Collins political fundraisers – a breakfast and a dinner – attended by staff from The Center for Industrial Effectiveness (TCIE, the "business arm" of UB's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences).
In October, The Spectrum found UB Foundation Activities Inc. (UBFA) – a tax-exempt, not-for-profit part of the UB Foundation (UBF) – to have broken federal law by making political contributions to Collins in March and June of 2010. One day after The Spectrum wrote about the contributions on Oct. 10, both UBF and the Collins campaign said the money was returned.
TCIE Executive Director Tim Leyh said on Oct. 12 that his staff attended the breakfast and dinner, but he insists he did not know the $2,560 his office paid for the events was going to the Collins campaign. He also said that even after attending the breakfast and dinner, he and his staff did not realize the events were political fundraisers. He called the illegal donations an "honest mistake."
Neither his office nor UB officials would release the names of the events, which staff members attended them, or when they took place, so The Spectrum filed the FOIL request on Oct. 31.
UB responded on Nov. 29 by saying it had no documents on the matter. The Spectrum appealed the response to Albany, and Gauthier upheld the university's decision.
UB has, according to Gauthier, no records of the names of the staff members who attended the events, no records of any other transactions that resulted in the UBF donation, and no documents indicating that Collins' campaign returned the $2,560, as officials on both sides claimed happened.
The donations were made in the name of UBFA, a private entity that does TCIE's accounting and is beyond the reach of FOIL requests (like the rest of UBF). As such, if the documents exist at UBF, they are unavailable for public scrutiny.
On Oct. 10, UBF Executive Director Ed Schneider said the money used for the donations came from revenue that TCIE generates for itself. Gauthier's finding that no state funds were used for the donations seems consistent with Schneider's statement. Plus, even if the dollars came straight from UBF, they would not be considered state funds, because UBF is a private corporation.
But UBF is inextricably linked with UB, the public university whose endowment ($494.7 million) UBF controls. Officials said the campaign donor was listed as UBFA instead of TCIE (the group that attended the events) because UBFA does accounting for TCIE, which claims to be a part of a public portion of UB – the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Email: news@ubspectrum.com
