Did Rev. Floyd Flake Loot From Wilberforce College!?
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Posted By: Will Moss on October 13, 2011 FEATURED Content Just recently saw this article on the NY Post... What do you think? I am fuming mad... The enrollment numbers speak volumes... New York political kingmaker and religious leader Floyd Flake rakes in the cash -- and leaves wreckage behind, critics say. By ISABEL VINCENT and MELISSA KLEIN For five years, the former congressman headed one of the largest churches in the country in Queens while simultaneously running a small college in Ohio -- pocketing hundreds of thousands in salary and benefits from both places. Now Wilberforce University faculty members say he bled them dry, setting the storied black Protestant college on the road to financial ruin. “He came in and looted the place,” said Robert Fitrakis, a lawyer for the faculty who filed a complaint last month with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office. Rev. Floyd Flake Ellis Kaplan Rev. Floyd Flake Old Westbury, LI home Angel Chevrestt Old Westbury, LI home Greater Allen AME Cathedral Riyad Hasan Greater Allen AME Cathedral The faculty is seeking to oust the current board and Flake’s handpicked successor, charging that they have breached their legal and financial duties. The faculty members claim that after Flake became president in 2002, his compensation and perks skyrocketed, he hired cronies as high-priced administrators, he failed to raise enough money and he insisted on a pricey contract with the Princeton Review, where he sat on an advisory board. In his last year at the college, 2008, Flake pulled down a total compensation package of $340,100, which included his salary of $145,833 and a retirement benefit of $149,267. He also had a $45,000 expense account. Almost all of Wilberforce’s revenue, about 90 percent, comes from taxpayer dollars, including federal financial aid and government grants. And Flake earned the outsize salary while working at the college only one day a week, said a faculty member. “He would fly out on Monday morning, get here in the afternoon, leave sometime on Tuesday morning,” said Richard Deering, a professor who has been at the 600-student college since 1968. The college maintained on its tax filings that Flake worked 40 hours a week during the first five years he was there. But Flake also said he worked 40 hours a week at a nonprofit he ran out of his New York home, according to that group’s federal tax reports. Flake tooled around the campus in a new $54,000 Cadillac Escalade. He apparently rejected the off-campus house the college offers its presidents. Instead, he bought a $190,000 condo in a town closer to shops and restaurants. That 2005 purchase came in the same year that his salary nearly doubled, from $120,000 to $204,998, and his expense account shot up to $39,300 -- almost exactly what would be needed to put a 20 percent down payment on the condo. Although the college did provide an expense account, Flake claimed in a 2007 interview that he and his church, the Greater Allen Cathedral of New York, paid for his trips to Ohio. Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/queens/... If you enjoyed this article, Join HBCU CONNECT today for similar content and opportunities via email! |
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Will Moss
Founder & CEO, HBCU CONNECT, LLC Hampton University class of 1995 Member Since June 1999 |
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