SPRINGFIELD, IL- Following the Illinois Auditor General’s release of its performance audit of the University of Illinois Discovery Partner’s Institute’s (DPI) would be construction project known as “The 78” yesterday,State Senator Chapin Rose (R-Mahomet), Co-Chair of the Legislative Audit Commission, is calling on University of Illinois System President Tim Killeen to answer for nearly $50 million in taxpayer dollars wasted on a building that will now never be built.
The audit was performed pursuant to Sen. Rose’s LAC Resolution #168, authorizing the work to be conducted.
Key Points from the Audit:
- The U of I spent $49.7 million of state taxpayer’s money on the construction of “The 78” in Chicago, only to “pull the plug” on the project shortly after construction started. (Audit, p. vi).
- An additional $22.7 million in student tuition dollars has also been spent on DPI overall, but it is unclear which campus these “income fund” dollars may have been generated from. (Audit Exhibit 6, p. 15).
- 16 days before the U of I President pulled the plug, the Dean of the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois noted that, “… not having an intellectually driven focus to DPI – presents significant risk to [DPI’s] future.” (Audit, p. 24).
- Despite the timing of pulling the plug shortly after the local Grainger Dean “sounded the alarm”, the University told auditors that the Dean’s comments were not the reason they pulled funding for the project (“…not what drove the decision. These were perspectives from one university leader.”). However, they then refused to identify any reason for why construction suddenly stopped other than to say that it was President Tim Killeen’s decision. (Audit, p. ix).
- State auditors also reported that they were unable to verify if DPI’s annual goals were actually met for many of the years they tested. “As a result, auditors could not determine if the yearly goals were met.” (Audit p. 21).
“So, let me get this straight, President Killeen spent over half a decade and $50 million dollars on a project that his own Dean of Engineering noted still had no intellectual focus just sixteen days before construction started? What an utter and epic failure,” said Sen. Rose.
Sen. Rose noted that President Killean will now be called before the full Legislative Audit Commission where a thorough review of the audit, and the myriad of additional questions and concerns it has raised, will be covered.
The full Audit can be read here.