CU~ry·U\W Sl·\HOOL

UEENS COLLEGE'
65·21 ~lAIN STREET
rlrSHI:'IG. :'iE~' YORK 1111>7
718/S7S-~200

To: Haywood Burns

From: Dave Fields m.

Thank you for your letter of March 25, 1991 rega~ding the request
that John Farago made for certain records regarding the Apple fiasco
that he created. Responding in every reasonable way possible has
also been my approach to this problem. Of course, I only regret that
he did not listen to the many letters I wrote to him regarding a
reasonable way to handle accounts, purchases, budget limits,
receiving procedures and the like, since if he had we and the rest of
the University, would not be sitting in the position we ..now find
ourself.

It is most reasonable to permit John to have access to the

purchase orders that the business office handled and he has now
requested. Upon the direction of the University's chief auditor,. we
will provide appropriate supervision of the photocopying so that no
paper leaves the Law School and I will ask the business. office staff
to allow John or another authorized person, not on my staff, to make
the copies of those Apple purchase orders made by the Law School
between 1987-90. Nettie has estimated that this copying will take
more than three hours.

Please be advised that there will probably be more requests from

Farago for photocopying, if he really wants to get to the bottom of
this fiasco of his. The purchase orders in the business office
represent those System Office purchases made with Law School
funds backing them and in accordance with State purchase
regulations. This is not were the problem lies. The problem lies, as
I said and wrote many times, in Farago's continued refusal to follow
State regulations or keep within his budget over these past years.
Farago's use of phoney purchase orders, a lack of receiving
procedures, a disregard of budget limits, the commingling of other
Colleges funds to pay for what he could not afford, double billing,
phoney billing and the misuse of the checking account coupled with
his refusal and failure to follow the procedures set by the business
office is the cause of our current CUNyhwide Apple freeze.

In my opinion, John will only be able to "explain" things when he

reviews the purchases that did not go through the business office.
These are the purchases made over the phone, via the checkbook, and
without funds or authorization to back them up. The paperwork for
those activities is with the CUNY auditors and we will have to ask
them if it is ok for Farago to have access to that material under
proper supervision.

As you know, I have been spending inordinate amounts of my time

working to clean up this latest of Farago's messes. I have gone to
meetings with auditors and other senior officials within the
University administration to plead for soft funds to be loaned to us
to pay John's bills in order to get the rest of the University off
Apple's freeze. The Law School will of course have to pay back any
funds I can raise in this manner. We will be having "John Farago
budget cuts" in our Law School budget for years to come, when and if
I can get the 140,000 + thousand dollars loaned to us to clear up this
mess.

When John is ready to copy the materials that the auditors have
permitted, he should get in touch with me, Nettie or Bill to set up a
time so we can have the copying supervised.

cc: John Farago

Nettie Strine