UA spokesman fired; boss cites irreparable rift

Diamond exits in September

John Diamond, Associate Vice Chancellor for University Relations at the University of Arkansas, who will leave at the end of September.
John Diamond, Associate Vice Chancellor for University Relations at the University of Arkansas, who will leave at the end of September.

The chief spokesman for the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville will lose his job next month, apparently over differences with other administrators regarding how open the university should be with information it provides to the public.

John Diamond, the campus’s associate vice chancellor for university relations since 2010, “will be leaving the University of Arkansas at the end of September 2013,” his boss, Chris Wyrick, announced in a news release Friday afternoon.

Later Friday evening, Wyrick released a second statement that said he had fired Diamond and that the reasons for the dismissal “are contained in correspondence Mr. Diamond received from me today.” The statement said Diamond had declined to allow the documents’ release.

“The university informed Mr. Diamond that it believes the correspondence is subject to release under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act. In response Mr. Diamond declined to allow release of the documents and wishes to seek an opinion from the Arkansas Attorney General.”

The law provides for public employees whose records are sought to obtain such an opinion.

Diamond had said by telephone Friday afternoon that he had been terminated.

“I believe it’s the result of strong philosophical and material differences over what it means to be a transparent and publicly accountable university,” Diamond elaborated in a brief email message to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

“I learned of this decision in a text message from Chris Wyrick at 11:28 this morning,” the message said.

Wyrick replaced Brad Choate as vice chancellor for university advancement July 1. Choate lost his job June 30, about a year after the university discovered a multimillion-dollar budget deficit in his division going back several years.

Wyrick announced a restructuring of the division in July that included promotions of 11 employees and the retirements of Associate Vice Chancellor for Development Bruce Pontious and Director of Constituent Relations Kris Macechko.

At the time the restructuring was announced, Diamond was one of three finalists for the job of vice president for strategic communications at the University of Iowa, but he was not hired.

Thursday morning, when rumors began circulating that Diamond had been fired, Wyrick told the Democrat-Gazette that was not the case, nor had Diamond resigned. When asked whether anything could have happened to trigger such a rumor, Wyrick replied: “I don’t know where in the world that came from.”

Wyrick didn’t return a phone call later Thursday regarding more specific rumors that Diamond had been relieved of his duties.

By Friday morning, an employee in Wyrick’s office said he wouldn’t take a call from the newspaper, citing a policy that all media calls be routed through the university relations office.

On Friday evening, before he issued his second statement, Wyrick responded to a reporter’s emailed questions concerning why he’d said Thursday that he didn’t know the source of the rumors and regarding the terms of Diamond’s remaining weeks.

“I intended to reassign Mr. Diamond for the remainder of the year,” Wyrick wrote. “When you called I had not terminated him. After our phone conversation, considering my conversation with John and other actions taken by John with his colleagues and me yesterday, and after conversation with other senior leaders, I decided our working relationship was beyond repair and the employment relationship had to end. Therefore, today I gave John 30 days’ notice.”

Diamond will retain his title, and his duties will be finalized Monday, Wyrick wrote. He will receive his current, publicly funded salary of $173,354 for 30 days and Diamond’s last day will be Sept. 22.

A national search for Diamond’s successor will begin immediately, Wyrick said in the news release. The university relations office’s senior director of creative services, Roy Cordell, was chosen as interim associate vice chancellor for the office until a replacement can be found.

“My wife and I love Northwest Arkansas, our church community, and the U of A,” Diamond wrote in the email Friday. “We need some time to process this news before saying anything more.”

Diamond took the position with UA in September 2010 at age 55, beating out 150 other applicants and earning a starting salary of $156,000 in the position, which oversees communications, publications, websites and marketing, according to Democrat-Gazette archives. The position had been vacant since Tysen Kendig left in January 2010.

He arrived at UA from the University of Maine System, where he was executive director of external affairs.

Diamond served in the Maine House of Representatives through much of the 1980s. A Democrat, he served as majority leader from 1984-88.

Chancellor G. David Gearhart had long been regarded by news media as an accessible chancellor until news of the Advancement Division’s overspending in its budget became publicly known last December. Gearhart published a “Transparency and Accountability” report on the university’s website in 2009, a few months after he took the helm of UA.

Within a couple months of the discovery of the deficit, Gearhart and other university officials said they wouldn’t answer more questions about it until an audit of the matter by the state’s Legislative Audit Division was completed. An official there has said the audit could be finished by late August or sometime in September.

More recently, the university replied with a single, one-page document to a July 22 Freedom of Information request from the Democrat-Gazette seeking emails, letters, memorandums, text messages or other documents from a variety of Fayetteville campus and UA System officials, including UA trustees. The request sought numerous documents regarding communications in 2013 on the deficit, budget-balancing efforts and a restructuring within the Advancement Division.

Diamond, the designated go-between when public-records requests are filed with the university, worked with the newspaper to narrow the request after the university said it was overly broad.

On Wednesday, about a month later, the university replied with the document, dated March 13, a summary by one of Wyrick’s employees of the restructuring plans, including a timeline of 30-60 days. An attached response said it was “the only responsive document to your recent FOIA that the university has identified.”

The newspaper also has sought, and not received, the university’s finalized Advancement Division budget for fiscal 2014 and more information on how it says it was able to balance the division’s fiscal 2013 budget.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 08/24/2013

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