Bowers Asks Board to Name Fact-Finder : Investigation: The Moorpark College president is threatened with firing next week. He is charged with funneling nearly $80,000 through the college's private foundation.

By DARYL KELLEY

June 11, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Moorpark College President Stanley L. Bowers, threatened with firing next week, said Monday that he wants community college trustees to appoint an impartial fact-finder to determine whether he has done anything wrong.

Bowers maintained that he is being fired not because he funneled nearly $80,000 through the college’s private foundation but because of the fervor for reform that has swept the Ventura County Community College District since Trustee James T. (Tom) Ely was charged with embezzling $15,000 last summer.

Ely and his wife, Ingrid, are on trial for allegedly padding travel vouchers.

“I think I am caught up in that,” said Bowers, 56, detailing his position in the dispute for the first time.

The veteran Moorpark College administrator said that, despite repeated requests, he never has been given a chance to tell his full story to district trustees, who notified him last month that they intend to fire him.

“It’s fundamentally damned unfair,” Bowers said. “I want to keep my job. I don’t think I deserve what’s happening.”

Bowers and his attorney, Paul D. Powers, said the embattled president violated no state law when he approved several transfers of funds to the Moorpark College Foundation over a three-year period. They said Bowers has been reprimanded and faces dismissal for approving transactions that were proper and, in some cases, sanctioned by top district officials.

Bowers said he has not defended himself aggressively until now because he hoped that he would be dealt with fairly by the trustees. He met privately with them before he was reprimanded in December and before the board voted last month to proceed with his firing, Bowers said. But the trustees’ minds already were made up, he said.

“They were sitting there with their attorney indicting me for things,” he said. “To this day, my position has not been heard by the board.”

Now, Bowers said, he wants an independent finding of facts because he is not confident that he will get an open-minded hearing from the trustees.

“I would like to see a broad-brush review of the whole thing,” he said. “It could be by a retired judge or the superintendent of schools.”

Trustee President Timothy Hirschberg said no outside inquiry is needed. Bowers has been treated fairly and has been heard by the board before its two disciplinary decisions, Hirschberg said.

“I feel the board is bending over backwards to be fair,” Hirschberg said. “Tuesday’s meeting provides Bowers with an opportunity to be heard. We have not shut the door on that.”

Bowers’ call for an impartial review follows by just five days a request by Trustee Gregory Cole for a state investigation of Moorpark College’s financial transactions with its private foundation.

Cole, stung by criticism from college faculty that the trustees are firing Bowers without good reason, asked the attorney general’s office to investigate the transactions. State officials have not decided whether an inquiry is warranted.

Cole said a state inquiry would not preclude the trustees from acting on Bowers’ dismissal June 18, after a public hearing and private deliberations by the board.

Bowers was reprimanded by the trustees in December for transferring $51,000 in campus bookstore profits to the foundation, which bought new furniture for the president’s office and a country club membership in his name.

Bowers also came under fire for channeling $3,152 in bookstore profits to Ingrid Ely, the college’s former alumni association president, to pay for travel. State law requires that bookstore funds be spent for the benefit of students, trustees said.

Last month, the trustees moved to fire Bowers for allegedly sidestepping pension and union regulations by approving payment of two employees with $25,000 funneled through the foundation.

Bowers has insisted that his actions were legal and proper except for giving Ely travel funds, which he acknowledges was a mistake.

He said Monday that he transferred the $51,000 in bookstore profits to the foundation’s account to simplify bookkeeping. The money was spent for the same items--a campus sports stadium, expenses related to foundation fund-raising and college seminars--both before and after the transfers.

How the district’s three colleges use bookstore profits has been left to the discretion of campus presidents since 1985, he said, and state law allows use of the money to benefit the student body. All foundation activities helped students at the college, he said.

Nor did he use any of the money personally, Bowers said. His new office furniture was purchased by the foundation because its executive committee uses the office for meetings and to solicit contributions, he said. Foundation officials thought that his old furniture was too worn, he said.

As for the country club membership, it was good only for meals and was only used for college-related affairs, Bowers said. “I never took my family or friends there,” he said.

Hirschberg said Bowers was reprimanded not because of the way the bookstore funds were used, but because he could not account for all of the expenditures. Foundation records did not show where several thousand dollars went, Hirschberg said.

Bowers also has maintained that paying one retired and one part-time employee $25,000 through the foundation was an effort to keep a good program alive. It was proposed by Lawrence G. Lloyd, a Moorpark College vice president, and was approved by district Vice Chancellor Tom Kimberling, who recently resigned under fire for alleged mismanagement.

“I said, ‘Larry, I don’t have a personal problem with that as long as the foundation approves it,’ ” Bowers said. He said Lloyd later assured him that district officials had approved of the program.

“I assumed the transaction was legitimate, why wouldn’t I?” Bowers said.

Times correspondent Jane Hulse contributed to this story.