Ex-CSUMB head faces scrutiny
Monterey Herald 3/11/07
Smith, founding president and top administrator for 10 years at CSU-Monterey Bay, in June 2005 took over as assistant-director general for education at the Paris headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations.
Smith is the highest-ranking American official with UNESCO since the United States returned to the international agency after a 19-year absence that ran from 1984 to 2003.
UNESCO officials are awaiting the results of a special outside audit about $2.1 million in contracts awarded by Smith to a Chicago-based consulting company.
Smith hired Navigant Consulting, a specialist in financial, regulatory and operational issues for businesses and government agencies, to assist in the overhaul of UNESCO'S education arm that has some 300 employees in France and more than 50 countries.
The Navigant effort was led by Letitia Chambers, managing director of the company's Washington, D.C., office, who stepped down from her job as executive director of the New Mexico Commission on Higher Education in 2005.
Questions arose whether the consulting firm was hired without competitive bidding, as required by UNESCO rules, and whether the Navigant contracts were properly reviewed in the agency's contract review process.
"It is an important question," said Nino Muñoz Gomez, UNESCO's communications director. "Then we'll see if the existing rules are the most appropriate (ones)."
Muñoz Gomez, while agreeing the audit report will address key issues, said asking for the report -- which is expected to be released late this month before UNESCO'S executive board meets April 10 -- wasn't an unusual move.
"It's not exceptional that we ask for audits, the way the programs are evolving for us," he said. "It's one of our management tools."
Smith wasn't available for comment, and one of his aides directed inquiries about the audit to Muñoz Gomez.
Scathing report|
When the education sector reorganization was announced in the summer of 2006, it set off howls of protest from some UNESCO employees who circulated a scathing, anonymous nine-page memo that said the changes "seriously endanger... fundamental principles" of the United Nations.
The memo complained that the $2.1 million paid to Navigant came from "regular program funds" and that Smith used another $200,000 from literacy funds to participate in a half-day literacy event in New York in September organized by first lady Laura Bush and the White House.
In a May 2006 memo, Smith defended transferring $200,000 for the New York event because it would "lead to increased financial and political commitment" from member nations.
The employee memo contended that critics of Smith's changes were shuffled out of Paris into various countries to "silence" them and that the agency's adult literacy program was being gutted.
Muñoz Gomez said he wouldn't comment on the employee memo because it was circulated anonymously.
"It's difficult to make any hypotheses" about the memo's assertions, he said. "People may not be happy for various reasons, either the new policy approach or for personal reasons."
He estimated the number of employees upset about the changes at 10 to 20 "not completely satisfied for personal reasons."
The employee memo prompted a critical article about Smith in a Paris monthly news magazine in January that ran Smith's picture with the headline, "Bush protege creates a scandal in Paris.
The article spoke of "an explosive atmosphere" within UNESCO's education sector and "enormous and strange contracts" angering agency workers. It claimed Smith insisted on recruiting Chambers for the consulting job.
Muñoz Gomez said he didn't know details of how Smith selected the consultants.
"Frankly, the report being processed is whether the way Navigant was hired... was following the rules," he said.
Past settlement|
The French article noted that Smith was a one-term Republican congressman in Vermont and that his tenure at CSUMB was marked by a $2.5 million settlement in 2002 with three Latino employees who claimed they had been discriminated against.
The California Faculty Association, which in November sued the California State University system about controversial executive compensation given to Smith and other former executives, picked up the French magazine story for its in-house magazine's winter 2007 issue.
Smith received about $157,000 after he left CSUMB. UNESCO employees contended that violated the agency's ethics rules.
Muñoz Gomez said the CSU payment to Smith was compensation for service before he started with UNESCO.
"Once he started work... he had no other professional relationship with any other institution. That is what is forbidden."
The news stories about Smith made the rounds at CSUMB a few weeks ago and triggered talk about his administration at the campus.
Professor Rafael Gomez, chairman of the School of World Languages and Cultures at CSUMB, said some faculty members who didn't admire Smith's record saw parallels to the current UNESCO situation.
"That's his management style," said Muñoz Gomez, president of the local faculty association chapter. "It is good the world is finding out, but it is bad because we don't want the bad publicity."
Navigant didn't do any work for CSUMB during Smith's tenure at the university that started in 1994 on former Army property in Fort Ord, a university spokeswoman said.
Muñoz Gomez said it's "a pity" that the uproar over Smith's job performance has verged into "personal aspects of his previous professional life." The important thing, he said, is UNESCO'S overall goal to improve education throughout the world.
"Our objective remains to keep committed in terms of education for all," he said.