UNC System Limits UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees’ Authority Over Athletics

[altmin]

UNC System Limits UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees’ Authority Over Athletics

In a memo sent after UNC-CH hired Bill Belichick, the system's leader said trustees' actions around athletics "create substantial legal risk."

www.theassemblync.com

The head of the University of North Carolina System told UNC-Chapel Hill trustees last month to stay in their lane—and out of negotiations around Tar Heel athletics.

“Instances continue to occur where members of the board appear to act independently of their campus’s administration in matters squarely within the responsibility of the chancellor,” UNC System President Peter Hans wrote in a memo to UNC-CH Board of Trustees Chair John Preyer and Chancellor Lee Roberts.

Such actions “create substantial legal risk to the University—jeopardizing the North Carolina taxpayers’ money by blurring the lines of actual and apparent authority when these athletic departments negotiate business transactions with third parties,” Hans said in the January 16 memo that The Assembly obtained through a records request.

Hans said he was temporarily suspending parts of “the delegations of authority” that system policy gives to the Board of Trustees. Going forward, Hans wrote, he or his designee must approve any hiring or salary adjustment related to athletic department employees other than administrative assistants. For the UNC-CH athletic director and head coaches whose contracts must be approved by trustees, Hans said his sign-off will be needed first, and trustees shouldn’t “play any role in negotiation of such actions.”

 

[altmin]

Hans also said his sign-off would be needed for athletic department purchases of goods and services valued at $29,000 or more, according to the memo. “Neither the board of trustees, nor any of its individual members, shall play any role in the negotiation of, review, or approval of such contracts or contract amendments,” the memo says.