Stanford to Return U.S. Funds Used for Upkeep of Tomb

Stanford University has voluntarily exhumed the latest improper bill to the federal government for research--$1,300 a year for upkeep of a mausoleum where the school’s namesake family members are buried.

“We’ve acknowledged there are problems with our accounting system,” Larry Horton, vice president of public affairs for Stanford, said Thursday. “This is all part of fixing the problems.”

Horton, who acknowledged that U.S. auditors pointed out the mistake first in May, said the school charged the federal government $1,300 a year for six years during the 1980s for the upkeep of the sphinx-guarded mausoleum on campus. Leland Stanford Jr., the school’s namesake, is buried in the tomb with his mother and father, a U.S. senator when he died in 1893. Stanford plans to reimburse the government, an official said.

The mausoleum is one of 30,000 rooms in 800 buildings on the 8,000-acre campus that is being reviewed to determine if Stanford charged the federal government for its upkeep, and whether the bill was proper, Horton said.

The federal government has been investigating Stanford for several months after U.S. research contract negotiators accused the school of overbilling up to $180 million during the 1980s for federal research-related costs.

Stanford officials have denied systematically overcharging and blamed any improper billing on an inept accounting system that they say has since been improved.

The school has paid back $1.35 million in inappropriate research bills, including charges for depreciation of a 72-foot yacht, for administration of the Stanford Shopping Center and for parties, flowers and furniture at Stanford President Donald Kennedy’s campus home.

Kennedy, who denied culpability, announced he will retire next August because he was “seen as part of the problem.”

Previously, Stanford and most U.S. universities and colleges that conduct federal research put school overhead costs into a pool account, then charged government based on the percentage of work attributed to research.

Overhead includes maintenance and library services, for example, that can’t be directly tied to a specific research project. Stanford gets about $240 million a year for U.S. research but will get $28 million less this year because of a reduced overhead rate that came out of the ongoing probe.