The thing called “investigative journalism” is alive and well if you have been following the activities at the University of Central Arkansas as reported in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. The reported gift of $700,000 by a vendor (a supplier of services) for renovation of the UCA president’s house has opened up a whole list of questions - some of which the Arkansas State Police will be investigating. The fine line between the words ‘gift’ and ‘ bribe’ apparently varies from organization to organization and we may not have a clearer picture for society when the smoke clears, but the UCA Board of Trustees will at least look at contracts with a more critical eye in the future.

Apparently they have decided to put this particular service out for competitive bids after the $700,000 conditional offer was exposed. Hopefully we will learn more about this whole episode because it might be just an example of the way business ‘tends to be’ handled in our nation’s capital through our elected officials’ offices.

So far I haven’t readwhat the service provided by Aramark consisted of except that it was “food related.” By that I can make several assumptions but don’t know if it relates only to meals, or includes vending machine services and other related areas as well.

It would also be interesting to know how many dollars are at stake in a single year of the contract and how inflationary costs are handled over a year’s time.

Ultimately, the students pay for this service as part of their educational costs, so I would certainly want to know what effect decision-making of this type costs me if I were a student at UCA or if my child was attending there. The cost of education goes up for reasons other than text books and tuition fees. And, the condition of the gift was a seven-year renewal of the contract.

My concern over this is based not on the effect this has on me personally,but rather it is based on my business experience.

Many years ago I worked at a large corporation supplying electronic parts to the U.S. government on a contract. The price of our product was based on the company’s cost plus a percentage. The more the unit cost of our product increased the more money the company realized. I doubt the UCA situation was a cost-plus contract, but the extra $700,000 becomes $100,000 per year and had to be added to the revenue Aramark expected to receive each year. And, I doubt Aramark is a nonprofit corporation existing just to provide low-cost services to UCA.

As I have mentioned many times in this space, we are at the mercy of those we elect to make decisions IF we ignore their activities after they take office. We are fortunate to have freedom of information laws in Arkansas that allow news media such as the Arkansas Democrat Gazette staff to expose situations like the UCA question. It would be a great help to our society if additional news mediafunds were available to question more areas of our leadership. No one likes to have someone looking over their shoulder or having to account for every decision, but that is the only way I know to develop faith in our leaders. Many people like to call it micro-managing, but there is a difference between an honest mistake and failure to follow up on information available before a decision is made.

I experienced that accusation many times during my years on the Benton County Quorum Court.

Some people really fight to hide their decisions as we frequently see in Washington politics. I don’ t know whether WikiLeaks is right or wrong, but it and the revelation of so many government documents certainly has brought a new focus to the question of what goes on in government.

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Editor’s note: Leo Lynch, a native of Benton County has deep roots in northwest Arkansas. He is a retired industrial engineer and former Justice of the Peace. He can be contacted at prtnews@ nwaonline.com.

Opinion, Pages 4 on 09/28/2011