Preliminary findings report potential policy violations, misuse of public funds; board to hold special meeting Monday
College of the Canyons is planning to consider a forensic audit Monday at a special meeting of its governing board, according to an agenda posted Friday on the college’s website.
The investigation “in its beginning stages and is ongoing” is looking into allegations of “misuse and the misappropriation of funds” for contracts the college awarded from 2000 to 2019 under Chancellor Dianne Van Hook.
Van Hook did not immediately return a message left late Friday afternoon.
The request stemmed from the “preliminary findings” of an internal investigation that started with a Sept. 9 memo by interim COC President David Andrus to the college’s vice president of facilities.
The letter asks to review the contracts and whether they “aligned with industry and legal standards,” according to the memo, which is included in the agenda for the special meeting.
The preliminary findings in a PowerPoint indicated Andrus’ request resulted in discovery of “potential violations of college board policies and applicable laws and regulations regarding competitive bidding by former district personnel, prior district contractors and consultants.”
Additionally, the PowerPoint says the preliminary findings include the “college funds potentially being misused, misappropriated, and used for personal benefit.”
The slides associated with the request for “approval to secure third-party professional services internal auditing firm through district legal counsel” also indicated college officials found evidence of “potential violations of competitive processes,” “potential inconsistency in terms and administration,” and “failure to obtain any backup invoicing / proof of work,” according to the presentation for Monday’s meeting.
“All findings are preliminary and ongoing,” according to the presentation from the district’s legal counsel. “The preliminary findings listed are not exhaustive and represent only a small sample size of projects.”
Eric Harnish, spokesman for COC, said Friday he did not know when Erin Tague, the assistant superintendent of facilities, responded to Andrus’ two specific requests: an Excel spreadsheet or spreadsheets that can be referenced in a logical and understandable manner; and a qualitative narrative that characterizes Tague’s findings.
He said that information has been part of an internal review and the timeline might be part of the discussion at Monday’s special meeting.
The departure of Van Hook figured largely into the talk surrounding the Nov. 5 election, which saw a rare school-board sea change, with three challengers unseating incumbents, and a fourth, the two-term incumbent and board President Edel Alonso, hanging on by less than 200 votes as of Thursday with an unknown number of ballots remaining to be counted.
Van Hook was placed on administrative leave by the Santa Clarita Community College District board of trustees, which oversees COC, in July after 36 years in charge of the college.
She announced her retirement less than two weeks later.
Just one week before the election, she issued a news release regarding a wrongful termination claim she filed with the college.
According to the release, she is alleging that she was “abruptly removed from her position and forced to resign based on the board’s misuse of the results of a campus climate survey conducted to gauge various aspects of COC’s work environment.”
