Opinion: New UNT president gets a financial trial by fire

[Harry]

Neal Smatresk hasn’t had the easy transition he might have hoped for in his new job as president of the University of North Texas in Denton.

In fact, UNT has been in a storm of bad news almost since Smatresk took over in February, none of it his fault but all of it his job to fix.

Between 2004 and early this year, the university improperly drew down more than $83.5 million in state funds to pay employee salaries and benefits.

To his credit, Smatresk faces the problem head-on. The only part of it he ducked in a meeting with the Star-Telegram Editorial Board on Thursday is the investigation into exactly how things went wrong and what kind of settlement UNT will reach on paying back the money to the state.

Those two angles are being handled by Chancellor Lee Jackson and other UNT System officials headquartered in Dallas.

Still, Smatresk admits to being baffled at how UNT got itself in this position. The problems were recognized as early as 2011, he said, but still were not adequately corrected.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/06/05/5877817/new-unt-president-gets-a-financial.html#storylink=cpy

[Tree]

Speaks to the failure of past leadership -> "The problems were recognized as early as 2011, he said, but still were not adequately corrected."