At College of DuPage, taxpayers pay for the food; Foundation pays for the booze

The front page story in today's COD Daily Scandal, a.k.a. Chicago Tribune, reveals a pretty slick trick President Breuder used to buy all that fine wine and scotch consumed by Breuder and trustees at Waterleaf dinners before 25 Board meetings in the last four years. Since charging taxpayers for liquor is frowned upon at community colleges, Breuder simply split the bill; food to Breuder's Waterleaf... house account and high octane refreshments to the College of DuPage Foundation's Waterleaf house account. Those 25 meetings racked up $9,000 in bar bills expensed at the expense of needy students, who could have received many more scholarships for that $9,000. The bigger the announcement at Board meetings, the bigger the bar bill which averaged $360 per dinner. Breuder and his trustee bosses really celebrated before an August, 2013, meeting where the Board announced Breuder was named CEO of the year for the Association of Community College Trustees' Central Region. The liquor tab for that dinner was $643 which included 6 bottles of fine wine. What's worse is that COD officials denied for months there even was a Foundation house account at Waterleaf. Perseverance by COD Daily Scandal reporters and lawyers finally coughed up the incriminating info. Breuder says all those FOIA requests were simply a fishing expedition. Can't be that when no fish could survive in what Breuder was swimming around in.