Felner Lives High on U of L Credit Card

It's still not clear what good Robert Felner's hundreds of thousands of dollars in No Child Left Behind grants did for Kentucky's children - but it certainly didn't hurt his lifestyle.

Expensive dinners at Jack Frye's, Proof on Main and the University Club. Moving Boxes!

This from Adam Walser WHAS 11 in the Ville: Full video here.

Louisville, Ky. (WHAS11) - The investigation surrounding former University of Louisville Dean Robert Felner continues.

During a time of budget cut-backs at the University of Louisville, it appears Robert Felner was spending big bucks, all apparently with university approval.

When students head back to the University of Louisville in the fall, most will face a nine percent tuition increase to make up for a budget shortfall.

The budget crisis was so great this year that salary increases for faculty members were capped 700 dollars and most work-related travel was cutback.

But WHAS11 News found out that apparently wasn’t the case for Dr. Robert Felner and more than two dozen members of the College of Education and Human Development.

Since the beginning of this year, the state of higher education in Kentucky has been dire.

University of Louisville President James Ramsey testified before the legislature of the doom and gloom. They even considered casino gambling as a way to stop the red ink.

But less than two months later, Dean Robert Felner took 27 members of the College of Education and Human Development to the American Educational Research Association in New York.

WHAS11 News went through nearly 300 pages of expense reports to determine that Felner’s college spent more than [$34,000] dollars on travel, lodging and meals.

Felner even hosted a reception at the conference that came with crab cakes, shrimp and plenty of drinks at a cost to the university of $8,508 dollars.

WHAS11 News also looked at Felner’s other spending during the last six months of his employment at the University of Louisville.

Felner liked to dine at some of Louisville’s finest restaurants on the university’s expense.

At Proof on Main, he ran up a $300 dollar bill, at Jack Fry’s, two dinners added up to $675.00.

Felner charged gifts, flowers, magazine subscriptions and professional dues on university credit cards during his final months as dean.

During Felner’s last month in June, he had some quite unusual charges, including hundreds of dollars to a company called U boxes, which sells moving boxes. He also had $759 dollars in charges to amazon.com.

The bills don’t indicate what Felner bought with U of L credit cards but the total charges add up to $31,335 dollars.

A university spokesperson says that attendance at the annual American Educational Research Association conference is critical for faculty members at a major research
university.

She says the number of attendees reflects a significant accomplishment for U of L.

The university can’t comment on Felner’s credit card charges, since that may be part of the federal investigation.

Thanks for the heads up, Jake.