Officials ring up calls, WSU pays

The Daily Evergreen (Pullman, Washington)
April 27, 1993 Tuesday

Officials ring up calls, WSU pays

BYLINE: BRETT OPPEGAARD, Sports Editor
SECTION: front page
LENGTH: 897 words

    Looming cuts in higher education and a relatively small Pac-10 budget leave the WSU athletic department in a position where austerity is bliss.
    Even though Athletic Director Jim Livengood publicly preaches penny-pinching in his department, the official said he has few qualms about personal phone calls paid for by university funds, and it shows when the phone charges are examined.
    "All of the coaches know we are trying to make sure we are not using phones outlandishly," he said. "I don’t get concerned unless an absolutely blatant misuse is brought to my attention."
    John Nelson, business manager for the department and supervisor of long distance calls said he didn’t view the unwritten department policy the same way. He likened it to telling employees not to take company pens and pencils home.
    "Do you have to tell people that the phones are for business purposes only?" he asked rhetorically. "People should know what is business and what isn’t business. The policy is: The long distance codes are for business calls only. Period."
    But Livengood freely admits calling his parents in Quincy, Wash., "two to three times" and charging it to the university’s bill. In actuality, from May 1992 to February 1993, WSU paid for almost $80 of Livengood’s calls – just to his parent’s home. His calls to friends and other family just add to the bill.
    As goes the leader, so go the followers.
    Nearly every coach in the department had calls to family, friends or both billed to the university during that time period.
    Men’s basketball coach Kelvin Sampson made more than $300 in calls to his parents in Pembroke, N.C., during those same ten months, and tacked on another $40 in calls to Lisa Borla in Las Vegas, Nev. – including a call that started at 12:24 a.m. and ended at 1:48 a.m., lasting 84 minutes at more than $20, and four calls on Sept. 8, ranging from 16 to 34 minutes, almost another $20.
Again, WSU picked up the bill.
    Borla said she and Sampson are good friends.
    Sampson was called several times to comment, and Livengood promised a week ago that he would have the coach contact The Daily Evergreen. However, Sampson did not reach the paper despite several messages.
    Even though Utah is far from a recruiting hot bed and the only player on the team from that area is his son, football coach Mike Price made 133 calls to the Beehive state in those 10 months. He had coached at Weber state in Ogden, Utah, for eight years.
    Include his personal "friend," not an enemy or anything," Tom Carlson and "faculty friend from Weber" Lee Jones, the fourth-year coach called the cities of Ogden, Salt Lake, St. George, Logan, Clearfield, Park City, Ephraim, Provo, Holladay and Murray for more than $175 total.
    Price said although the calls to Carlson and Jones were probably business related, both men are personal friends, and he doesn’t remember the content of the conversations.
    The coach also charged a 61-minute call to Las Vegas in June; he said he has no idea who resides at that number. When the number was called, the woman who answered said she didn’t have time to talk and didn’t know anybody from WSU.
    Questionable charges litter the 9,000 pages of calls accumulated by Business Services in the 10-month span.
    Assistant football coach Bill Doba called his in-laws several times, including nine times in nine days in one stretch during May 1992, totaling more than $35.
    In the same month, recruiting coordinator Phil Early called his wife in Bellingham 50 times for a total of more than $70, while she was in the process of moving to Pullman.
    "I was told moving expenses would be taken care of," Early said.
    Football graduate assistant Brian Lowe started making personal calls as soon as he arrived.
    No one said he could use the cards for personal business no was it implied, he said. But Lowe proceeded to charge nearly $300 in calls to his parents, friend Rochelle Rak and others in Pittsburgh, including the almost $60 charged to Price’s card by Lowe in the first two months he was on campus.
In those first calls were two to Rak on July 23, one starting at 1:28 a.m. and lasting 12 minutes, and another at 2:34 a.m. and lasting an hour and six minutes. Together, the calls cost almost $20.
    Price called those particular calls "in appropriate."
    "You’re going to find (the personal use of access numbers) in any company you look at," Lowe said. "For the hundreds of calls we make for the university, what am I supposed to do? Leave the office? Go back to my apartment and make the calls?"
    When the use of a calling card or reimbursing the university was suggested, Lowe said, "Don’t I still have the option to?"
    Livengood responded to the same question of why de didn’t reimburse the university by saying that he just didn’t.
    "One could argue that it (using the calling cards for personal use) is probably something we shouldn’t do," he said. "I’m not as concerned about that because I don’t think we have a blatant misuse of that. I think you do the things, and if you do the things with the right intentions in mind, everything is open to scrutiny."
    "Quite honestly, I probably need to look at these closer," he said.