DeKalb Times

Northern Illinois University (NIU) President Douglas Baker might be connected to a board of trustees investigation of the school’s internal controls on contracts, the Edgar County Watchdogs (ECW) allege.

The Office of the Inspector General (OEIG) recently determined that Baker mismanaged the school, and now, according to the ECW, evidence connects him to possibly suspicious contracts that NIU made with Urban Green LLC, a California-based company.

Piecing together information from a series of Freedom of Information Request (FOIA) responses, the ECW said that the university’s faculty senate took issue with the contracts with Urban Green and its owner, Jim Heid. According to a board of trustees response to the senate's concern that Heid was illegally hired, the board found that Heid helped draft a request for proposal that his company was eventually involved in.

Northern Illiniois University President Doug Baker | niu.edu

The university has spent $148,638 on an investigation carried out by law firm Franczek Radelet to discover if it had sufficient internal controls over contracts. The ECW point out that Heid is connected to Baker’s friend Ron Walters and one of the improperly hired employees identified in the OEIG report, and insists that there are more questions to be answered.