President of College Gets a Reprimand : Moorpark: Trustees say Stanley L. Bowers improperly transferred $51,000 in campus bookstore money to a private foundation.

Community college trustees officially reprimanded Moorpark College President Stanley L. Bowers on Tuesday after concluding that he improperly transferred $51,000 in campus bookstore profits to a private foundation that may have used part of the money for the president’s country club membership and new furniture in his office.

After a six-hour closed hearing, the Ventura County Community College District board also found that Bowers had funneled another $3,152 in bookstore profits to Ingrid Ely, the college’s former alumni association president, to pay for travel.

Both actions appear contrary to state law, which requires that bookstore profits be spent for the benefit of students, trustees said. And both reflect “a failure of due care and good judgment,” the two-page reprimand said.

The trustees, in an accompanying resolution, directed Chancellor Barbara A. Derryberry and Bowers to work together to get $16,000 back from the foundation, which is a major nonprofit fund-raiser for the college. The foundation should also document how another $35,000 was spent, the board said.

“My God, these were profits from book sales to students,” Trustee Gregory Cole said. “What would the students think if they knew that the 20-cent profit on the felt pen they bought at the bookstore is going for a country club membership for the college president. If I were a student, I’d be outraged.”

Bowers, 56, a Moorpark College administrator since 1977, denied any wrongdoing. He said, however, his decision to provide bookstore profits for Ely’s trips reflected “a lack of oversight.”

“I absolutely believed that these transfers were legal, proper and that they were going to appropriate activities,” Bowers said Tuesday in a brief written statement. “I still hold this opinion after careful legal and professional review.”

“I accept the decision of the governing board,” he said. “I believe that the action closes this matter.”

The trustees directed that the reprimand be part of Bowers’ permanent file and that it be considered by Derryberry in his upcoming job review.

The district’s investigation of the bookstore fund transfers grew out of a broad criminal inquiry by county prosecutors into community college Trustee James T. (Tom) Ely and his wife, Ingrid. The Elys are awaiting trial on conspiracy and embezzlement charges stemming from their alleged filing of false travel claims with the district.

Board President Timothy Hirschberg said the community college district began to probe the transfers in earnest in October after its attorney found that Bowers had exceeded his authority in providing the $3,152 in bookstore profits to Ingrid Ely for travel on behalf of the college.

In the following investigation, trustees discovered that during a two-year period beginning in mid-1988, Bowers approved the transfer of $51,000 from the bookstore’s account to the private Moorpark College Foundation.

Bowers and two other college administrators, Alicia Long and Larry Lloyd, sat on the committee that approved the transfers and the foundation’s 18-member board of directors. All three were authorized to sign checks for the foundation, Hirschberg said.

Trustees said they were able to determine how $35,000 of the $51,000 was spent because Bowers and foundation officials said it was earmarked for improvements to the campus football stadium, a project led by the foundation.

But the remaining $16,000 was not traceable because the money was deposited with other funds into the general account of the foundation, which has a $200,000 annual budget.

“There was no accounting for this money,” Cole said. Hirschberg added, “That’s why the board zeroed in on this--because of the potential for abuse.”

There is no evidence that Bowers criminally misappropriated bookstore funds, both trustees said. A spokesman for the district attorney’s office said that no criminal investigation is under way.

Bowers told trustees that bookstore money was not used to pay for the country club membership or a $1,500 love seat and sofa for his office, Hirschberg said.

“However, there’s a strong appearance of impropriety because of the numerous transfers of college funds into the foundation during the period of those purchases,” the board president said.

Jim Niles, executive director of the foundation, said he did not know whether bookstore profits paid for the furniture or for the North Ranch Country Club membership.

Niles said the membership, which was in Bowers’ name before it was canceled in September, was used not only by the college president but by Niles and a former foundation director as part of their fund-raising activities. The foundation has raised $1.5 million for the college since 1980, he said.

Bowers told trustees that bookstore profits, while not used for his office furnishings, were transferred to the foundation account several times specifically to pay for college-related dinners at the country club, Hirschberg said.

“The foundation hosted parties and dinners funded by the college bookstore profits,” Hirschberg said. “They called them management in-service events.”

Trustee Cole said the foundation gave Bowers “pretty much a blank check to take people and wine and dine them--whether it be potential donors or his wife or Tom and Ingrid Ely.” In fact, all were guests of the president at the country club, Cole said.

Bowers paid for his use of the membership through a regular payroll deduction that amounted to $1,000 a year, Cole said. But the college president’s actual expenses were less than that, said trustees, who learned of Bowers’ explanation at Monday’s closed hearing and in letters to the board. “We’re not talking about big money here,” Hirschberg said.

Moorpark College refused to release publicly receipts of Bowers’ expenditures at the country club. But Bowers said in a letter to the board that he used the privilege for only six meals in two years, plus a graduation dinner in 1989. He said he paid personally each time.

Bowers was not available Tuesday to explain why he would route bookstore profits to the foundation. But Cole said he considered the effort to be a “laundering of the money” that would obscure its source and therefore avoid complaints about questionable use of public funds.

Cole said the procedure gave Bowers the ability to channel the bookstore profits as he pleased and it kept trustees unaware of how the money was spent. Bowers told the trustees that he thought such power had been delegated to the district’s three campus presidents, the trustees said.

In their written reprimand, trustees criticized Bowers for helping to pay for football stadium projects with bookstore funds. They said the expenditure was proper because it helps students, but that since the $35,000 had been routed through a private foundation its origin was concealed and the public misled.

“Dr. Bowers inappropriately allowed an impression to be created that (the) stadium was being constructed with private funds when in fact public funds were involved,” the trustees said.