The most recent president of the now-defunct Burlington College slammed Jane O’Meara Sanders as “inexperienced,” also speaking out about an “appallingly inappropriate business deal” carried out under her leadership.
Before her departure in 2011, Ms. Sanders took out $10 million in loans on behalf of Burlington College to finance a campus-expanding land purchase from the Catholic diocese. That “crushing weight of debt,” as Burlington described it, forced the college to close its doors for good last May.
In paperwork regarding the loans, Ms. Sanders repeatedly claimed that she had received more than $2 million in fundraising commitments and pledges — money that never materialized.
Burlington’s final president, Carol A. Moore, has now publicly stated that “no written record of such a ‘promise’ could be found, anywhere in Burlington College’s records.”
In a letter to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Moore also raised questions about how the loans were approved.
“What bank lends a small, private, unendowed college of that size and financial status an amount that so obviously outweighs its ability to pay?” Moore wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education. “People’s United Bank of Vermont. … Who is to blame for this appallingly inappropriate business deal? Perhaps a board that steered clear of the tough questions that needed to be asked. Or a bank in the state of an influential senator—a senator, as it turned out, with bigger ambitions?”
The Catholic diocese, which was selling the land to pay a $17 million sexual-abuse settlement, also underwrote a $3.65 million loan to Burlington College, losing more than $1.5 million when the college defaulted.
Earlier this year, local Catholic parishioners sent two separate letters to Vermont’s attorney general and the inspector general for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. They asked for an investigation into whether Ms. Sanders had committed federal loan fraud by misrepresenting Burlington College’s financial standing, also later requesting an inquiry into whether Sen. Sanders had exerted inappropriate pressure for People’s United Bank to approve the loan.
Brady Toensing, the lawyer who wrote both letters on behalf of one named Catholic parishioner and other unnamed ones, is vice chair of the Vermont Republican party.
By deadline, Ms. Sanders and People’s United Bank had not responded to Heat Street’s request for a comment. Burlington College has been closed for months, and Carol Moore could not be reached.
