A proposed conflict-of-interest policy that awaits adoption by the SIU Board of Trustees could have prevented allegations of conflict of interest against the board’s chairman, administrators say.
SIU spokesman Dave Gross said the new policy, which will be voted on by the board Thursday, would have been in play when several reports linked the board’s chairman, Roger Tedrick, with conflict-of-interest violations in March.
The policy requires board members to remove themselves from conversations and votes on topics with which they may have a conflict of interest.
A report by the Chicago Tribune published April 26 revealed Tedrick, who owns Tedrick Insurance based in Mount Vernon, sold insurance to construction companies that, in nearly 40 instances, won business with the university.
Tedrick voted to approve at least 20 of those contracts.
Tedrick’s company acted as broker of liability insurance for 16 construction firms approved by the board since 2004. Essentially, Tedrick acts as a middleman between larger insurance companies and the contractors and earns a commission for his services, he said.
The new policy would require board members to inform general counsel when they could have a conflict of interest. The board would also have to annually report all conflicts of interest to the governor, Illinois senate president and Illinois minority leader.
“The new policy is going to allow for an early identification of potential areas where conflicts may arise,” Gross said.
SIU President Glenn Poshard said the policy would be an important step forward in a cloudy situation. Getting the policy approved and enforced should give the public the opinion that the university is doing the right thing.
“Hopefully this will give people the assurances they need that no one is going astray here,” he said. “Having that in place with the amount of time that has been taken on this is important.”
The university has been drafting the policy since Laraine Wright, a retired university employee, alleged Tedrick violated the board’s charter.
Tedrick said he consulted SIU general counsel immediately after learning of Wright’s allegations.
He said Jerry Blakemore, legal counsel for the SIU system, performed an internal investigation and found neither Tedrick nor any other board member had previously influenced any contract awarded by the board.
Blakemore hired a firm from Springfield that specializes in ethics law to investigate the matter further, Tedrick said.
“They have given (Blakemore) a preliminary report that says there was no conflict of interest,” Tedrick said. “It said this is an indirect interest that I have.
“There is no law that says I can’t have this type of indirect situation.”
But according to the Charter of the SIU Board of Trustees, no member is allowed to even indirectly benefit from such contracts.
“Nor shall any member of the Board be directly or indirectly interested in any contract made by the Board,” the charter says.
Tedrick said an “indirect conflict of interest” has never been defined, which makes it hard to enforce.
But the new policy states “a trustee shall not have any interest (financial or otherwise, direct or indirect) or engage in any business transaction or professional activity that is in substantial conflict with the proper discharge of his/her duties in the public interest.”
“Under this definition, there doesn’t actually have to be (a conflict of interest),” Gross said. “There just has to be an appearance of one.”
But Nate Brown, the board’s student trustee, said the new policy could be too comprehensive.
“We run the danger of going so far above and beyond,” he said. “We want to make it clear with the public that we are not admitting mistakes done in the past, we are not admitting that people were doing things under the wrong pretenses. This is all preemptive.”
Brown said the policy could even be detrimental to the university’s business.
“SIU is the economic engine for southern Illinois,” he said. “When you have people on the board that do business in southern Illinois, it’s nearly impossible to thrive or to even keep doors open without doing business with SIU.
“But it is important that we go on record to say this is how we are going to handle this. We should have had this in place a long time ago.”
