It was the only way to begin putting an end to the turmoil.

UCA announced today that President Lu Hardin will repay the $300,000 he received as accelerated payment of a deferred compensation plan.

He will receive the bonus eventually only if funded by private money and only after faculty pay increases (of what size, the news release doesn’t say.)

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Full release on the jump.

It’s a good step. Private money has been contributed to pay for an earlier $100,000 bonus. Private funding of the $300,000 will remove any question about whether this bonus might have exceeded the state pay cap. The UCA Board of Trustees had believed that the source of the money — a discretionary account comprising profits from campus book and restaurant sales — could be considered private. An attorney general’s opinion is pending on the point. I’d guess the opinion won’t find that to be private money, but a promise to handle it with purely private money should solve the problem.

Questions remain in my mind still if the UCA Foundation is the source of the money. It has ties — through university payment of employees — to the university. It is not wholly independent. On the other hand, perhaps it has been independent. Given two opportunities so far to cover bonuses to Hardin, it has not yet done so, except as a pass-throuugh for Rush Harding’s $100,000 check last week.

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These are the big issues for UCA in a media fury that has been all about the president and little about the campus’ strong growth under Hardin’s leadership. This welcome move won’t shut down all the talk, however. There’ll be some continuing discussion on account of his hire this week of a trustee’s daughter, Katie Henry, for a $70,000 legal job at UCA, without advertising the opening, though Hardin has stoutly defended the new lawyer’s qualifications. And I can tell you that every major media outlet in town has been flooded with a stack of more material about what a Hardin critic perceives as favoritism in university business, most centering on use of university facilities, property and employees in ways that are alleged to have benefitted friends and kin of UCA officials. I have no idea of the merits of this material at the moment, but it suggests enemies see blood in the water and haven’t yet given up hopes of capitalizing.

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