CHICAGO _ Northern Illinois University President Doug Baker will resign at the end of the month following a bombshell state watchdog report alleging he and his administrators skirted state bidding requirements by improperly hiring consultants and paying them exorbitant salaries and benefits.
Baker, who took office in 2013, announced his resignation at Thursday's board of trustees meeting. Though Baker denied the report's conclusions, which accused him of mismanaging the university, he said the damning investigation from the Governor's Office of Executive Inspector General proved a "significant distraction."
Baker said he recently approached NIU's board chairman, John Butler, to discuss the leadership for the DeKalb-based university.
"The result has been that the university community has continued to be distracted by the allegations in the report," Baker said in a statement released Thursday morning. "Given the challenges we face and the hard work ahead, I simply couldn't stand by and let this situation continue to fester."
The inspector general launched a probe into Northern Illinois' hiring practices in 2014 following several anonymous tips. State law requires public bids for professional services from an independent contractor worth more than $20,000. But the report found that the university hired nine employees between June 2013 and May 2015, paying them all more than $20,000, but never solicited bids for those jobs.
Two of those workers were paid more than $400,000 for 15 and 18 months of work, making them the third- and fourth-highest paid employees at the university, behind the head football coach and Baker.
To do that, the report concluded, Baker and his top administrators cloaked their hirings by deliberately assigning them the wrong classification.
Since Baker took office in 2013, "NIU has repeatedly misclassified high-level, highly paid consultants as affiliate employees, for the purpose of circumventing the Procurement Code's requirements," the report said.
"Ultimately, President Baker is responsible for mismanaging NIU's resources," the report concluded.
The report's findings were released to university officials nearly a year ago but made publicly available only on May 31.
Baker's resignation will be effective June 30. Trustees will consider a leadership transition and will announce an update after Thursday's meeting.
