Former Iowa president says he doesn't recall arrangements on Ken Mason pay

Former University of Iowa interim president Gary Fethke said Friday he did not recall a conversation five years ago that UI Foundation officials say took place regarding compensation for Ken Mason, but Fethke said he has no reason to claim the discussion did not happen.

Fethke, a longtime UI business professor and dean who recently retired, said via email he had no formal role in developing the offers to current UI President Sally Mason or her husband Ken Mason, "which is as it should be," Fethke said.

UI Foundation officials on Thursday released statements saying Fethke approached Lynette Marshall, president and executive officer of the UI Foundation, in 2007 when Sally Mason was hired, to tell Marshall that members of the state Board of Regents who were negotiating with Sally Mason on her employment package asked that Ken Mason be employed as a half-time fundraiser at a salary of $50,000 plus benefits, with his other half-time employment in the biology department. Marshall in her statement said Fethke encouraged her to agree to the request, and she said she would speak to the foundation board chairman and get back to him.

Fethke, in an email response to reporters Friday, said he did not develop, or specify, the parameters of the package, but said "I have no intention of distancing myself from the specifics ex post." Fethke was interim president from June 2006 to September 2007, when Mason started.

"I do not recall the specific conversation referred to by Lynette Marshall on this topic, but I have no reason to claim that it did not occur," Fethke said. "The conversation may have occurred once the basic outline of the package was developed internally by others."

Fethke added he believes it is proper that fundraising compensation should be paid for with UI Foundation resources, "but, still, this is an unusual case."

"There should be documentation of a special university request of this magnitude," he said. "Presumably, Ken Mason received an offer letter from somebody -- not from me."

Any request made by Sally Mason regarding a compensation package for her husband would have been made, appropriately, to the board of regents and not to the interim president, Fethke said.

"The board office approved the request and sent it on to the university through normal communication channels. To my knowledge, the university was not directed by any (board of regents) members or the board office regarding the specifics of how Ken Mason was to receive compensation," Fethke said. "It seems obvious that the university created a package that would fit the payment pattern that closely reflected what Ken Mason was expected to do, namely to teach undergraduate biology courses and to assist Sally Mason with presidential fundraising."

"Basically, once the initial request to the (board of regents) was approved, I think that the response was reasonably structured by the university," Fethke added.

Ken Mason's payment uses general education funds to cover his teaching appointment, and UI Foundation uncommitted funds to cover fundraising activities, and subsequent payments to Ken Mason have been reported annually in publicly available outlets by the university and the foundation, Fethke said.

The UI Foundation would not initiate a payment for Ken Mason without being asked by the university to do so, and "they did not have to comply, but they probably would," Fethke said.

Questions have been raised about Ken Mason's pay arrangements, and university and regents officials have varying recollections of the discussions from five years ago. The wives of the state's two other public university presidents do not get paid for fundraising work.