https://www.insidehighered.com/news...purchase-still-coming-back-haunt-jane-sanders
A more in depth article..
1) she claimed 2.6 million in pledged money, but donations were actually more like 120k annual. some of the purported donors denied pledging a specific amount, and ay least one was donation to be left when she died eventually..
2) After she left, her CFO, took over. Both the CFO and the college board signed off. If Jane is guilty, the CFO is guilty and the board members culpable at some level.
3) The detailed plan is not revealed.. but the college was struggling with the debt from day one. They had to pay property tax on the 32 acres until they were using it. Which by my estimate was north of 350k annual. This was about the annual income of the entire institution. So whatever the plan was, there was no money..
4) a building on the property was a former catholic orphanage. I belive part of the plan was to refurb that into student housing. After Sanders left the CFO determined it would cost 2 million additional to refurbish.. there was no cash to do that.
5) the bulk of the original financing was from a state financing arm (6 million)apparently through money raised by bonds. This was somehow purchased later by peoples bank. I think this is where Bernies influence woukd have been. The other financing came from the Catholic Diocese (2 million) ( Which owned the 32 acres to begin with) and a local bank (400,000). The diocese pulled the plug first. Eventually they sold 27 of the 32 acres to a developer for 7 million ,and kept 5 acres an the orphanage..
6) Sanders was paid a severence of 200k when she resigned.. Apparently she was asked to step down because she was bad at fundraising.
My guess is that this is more about competence than dislhonesty. There is no way a CFO should have signed off on that deal. So unless there us a document where the cfo recommends against, i think Sanders gets off with a wrist slap.
However, on the bonds financing side, Bernie was a power in Burlington, and i can totally see him encouraging the deal. He knew all the players, and could pull the strings. Pretty much classic Burlington, would think they could pull this off. Always a grand spending plan, without much connection to how to pay for it..