When IBM donated a $20,000 server rack to Ohio University last spring, Frank Corris believed his fears that the company would try to bribe the university had become reality.
At the time, OU was in the market for $500,000 in new servers.
A gift of any kind during a bidding process is simply inappropriate
said Corris, then the university's chief procurement officer, in an e-mail to OU's General Counsel John Biancamano.
Hoping to avoid the appearance of collusion, OU returned the gift, but Corris' outspokenness about IBM was one of several clashes with other OU officials that eventually led to his resignation last fall.
Corris' year and a half at OU was marked by accusations of insubordination and strained relationships with education officials across the state. The Post pieced together his time in Athens through interviews with OU officials and public records.
Corris, who earned $110,000 a year, came to OU in July 2008 after working as director of purchasing and travel at Ohio State University. OU offered higher pay, a better title and full tuition for his two sons.
Just six months after Corris arrived in Athens, his supervisors began noting instances in which he created a hostile work environment in his personnel file. A year later, Corris resigned.
The VMWare feud
The IBM gift was not the first time Corris confronted his superiors about possible ethical problems.
In March 2009, Corris accused Brice Bible, OU's chief information officer, of violating state competitive bidding laws when brokering a contract for the Ohio Board of Regents, which oversees public universities.
That was his opinion Bible said. I remember dealing with people like that when I was five years old on the playground and you just have to be above that.
Corris e-mailed Bible condemning what he deemed an ethical violation - saying the Inter-University Council's chief information officer committee, led by Bible, did not use a competitive bid process when it signed an $8.5 million deal with VMWare, which sells server virtualization software.
But Bible had followed state law. No other company met the specific needs and requirements that the Board of Regents desired, said Rob Evans, press secretary for the board.
Inappropriately outspoken
Despite documented disagreements with OU officials, Corris received only positive feedback during his annual evaluation in March 2009.
Frank does a great job leading his team and ... is a welcome addition to Shared Services
wrote Mark Hopton, assistant vice president of University Business Services and Corris' direct supervisor.
Three months after the evaluation, Corris said he advised against accepting the server rack from IBM, citing a bribery scandal at the University of Akron.
Akron's chief information officer, Thomas Gaylord, accepted $5,172.81 in gifts from IBM, according to a January 2004 report from the Ohio Inspector General. Gaylord received a total of $15,535 in gifts from four companies. At the same time, the university awarded $15.6 million in contracts to three of the companies, including IBM, from July 1999 to 2003.
Corris said former-Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration Bill Decatur asked him to watch for problems
but added superiors dismissed his concerns. Decatur, who left Athens in January to take a similar job at a private school in Rhode Island, declined to comment.
Accepting the server rack while negotiating a new server contract would have looked like favoritism, Bible said, adding that OU purchases most of its servers from IBM and Dell.
OU quickly returned the server rack unopened.
(IBM's) gift was discussed months before the contract was put out for bid
said Eric Burchard, OU's director of corporate and foundation relations, in an e-mail. The delivery time was purely coincidental
he added.
IBM representatives could not be reached for comment.
While IBM did not directly bid on the contract, it was awarded to an IBM reseller, Burchard said.
Although Hopton did not specifically mention Corris' concerns about IBM, he addressed the infighting with Bible and allegations of misconduct in an e-mail to Corris on July 15.
You have gained a reputation for being uncooperative and inappropriately outspoken ...
Hopton wrote.
The SciQuest Confusion
The volatile relationship between Corris and Bible spread beyond OU to Ohio's Inter-University Council.
Enough of this juvenile bickering between you and Brice (Bible)
wrote Cindy McQuade, the council's vice president of operations, in an August e-mail to Corris.
Several council members said they were concerned by a lack of direction and productivity in the council's purchasing group, which Corris led.
The first and biggest issue - in my opinion - is that there is not a clear or shared sense of direction and expectations within the (purchasing group)
wrote Sherideen Stoll, vice president for Finance and Administration at Bowling Green State University, in an August e-mail to the purchasing group.
Corris favored a deal with SciQuest, a procurement software provider that allows universities and colleges to compile lists of bidders on various contracts and evaluate purchases made by other institutions, among other things.
While four universities - OU, Bowling Green State University, Miami University and Shawnee State University - signed a contract with SciQuest, several other members of the council expressed concerns, through e-mail, about how the program worked and how it was funded.
Universities that already had active contracts with SciQuest or other procurement software providers were not included in the conversations, which led to confusion among some members of the council, said William Shawver, senior director of Purchase and Central Services at Miami University.
The SciQuest contract will cost OU about $1.3 million over five years.
I knew I couldn't beat the system
On Sept. 9, the state's top education official, Eric Fingerhut, praised OU's procurement team for securing a credit card contract with JP Morgan expected to save state colleges and universities about $250 million.
Decatur echoed the praise, singling out Corris.
(Corris) and the purchasing group really put this together
Decatur said in a September interview about the contract.
Days later on Sept. 15, OU placed Corris on paid administrative leave and banned him from campus while it investigated complaints about his behavior on the job. OU would not name the source of the complaints.
The complaints, which span a six month period and are detailed in a Sept. 14 letter from then-Senior Director of Human Resources Linda Lonsinger to Corris, include failing to maintain good working relationships, failing to fulfill his responsibilities as chair of the Inter-University Council's Purchasing Group, behaving in an unprofessional and unethical manner and insubordination.
Corris was also informed that he would no longer chair the council's Purchasing Group.
Less than a month later, Corris announced his resignation.
OU's Office of Legal Affairs said there was never an official investigation into Corris' behavior, despite the fact that he was placed on leave.
Corris now works as a consultant in Columbus and was replaced by Laura Nowicki on March 15.
I knew I couldn't beat the system
