Bruce Kone, former dean of UF/s College of Medicine, will receive $517,000 over the next three years as part of a resignation settlement that went into effect this month.
UF officials sent a proposed dismissal notice to Kone in April after they determined he authored anonymous e-mails and a letter that disparaged UF officials. He allegedly sent them to applicants for the senior vice president for health affairs position.
Kone denied writing the e-mails or letter, according to the 49-page settlement.
Kone was removed as dean of the College of Medicine in May 2008, about a month after he decided to overrule a medical school/s admissions committee and admit a student with political connections who had not taken the MCAT.
After a meeting with UF officials to explain his decision, Kone sent out a scathing e-mail to the officials.
"It/s a small town. There are small minds," he wrote, according to Alligator archives. "But for crap/s sakes, and speaking strictly as an alumnus, wake up. You are talented. Start leading."
After being removed as dean, Kone stayed on as a professor in the college.
In the e-mails that led to his dismissal, Kone allegedly attempted to persuade candidates not to come to UF.
"There are some things you need to know about UF that they will never tell you on your visit," the e-mail said. "It has gone to hell in a hurry and is in a classic death spiral."
In one section, Kone allegedly took on top administrators one by one in a list titled "THE WINNING TEAM."
The e-mail calls one administrator an "Uncooperative prima dona," describes another as "So hyper, he vibrates" and "an imbecile" and says of another: "Needs lithium. Has built nothing."
Many of the insults in the e-mails and letter are directed at Machen. At one point, Machen is called the worst president in UF/s history and is described as "among the top 10 most arrogant people on the planet."
Kone himself is also mentioned several times.
"The Kone execution was about the ugliest political assassination in the history of academic medicine and started the mass exodus of talent (what little there was) from the college of medicine," it read.
While at UF, he filed 12 complaints and made thousands of pages of records requests.
Kone agreed to drop all complaints he filed with UF and stop making public records requests as part of the settlement.
After investigating the complaints, UF found most of them to have no merit, according to university documents.
"A primary purpose of this Agreement is to cease all disputes and adverse interactions of the Parties, which have been extraordinarily time-consuming and distracting," the settlement reads.
Kone has agreed not to seek future employment with UF or its affiliates.
UF also agreed not to make any comments about the matter save for nine statements.
"Dr. Kone acknowledges that his concerns with the university have been resolved and that he is satisfied with the University/s response to complaints he had made," one statement reads.
Another statement, dealing with Kone/s payout, explains that it is just over a year/s worth of total compensation and states that UF would have spent as much or more if the disputes between UF and Kone had continued and resulted in litigation.
Kone was paid a salary of $525,000 when he was dean and about $418,000 afterward, when he was a professor, according to UF records.
UF has also agreed to send potential employers a pre-written reference letter signed by the university president at the time.
The letter does not mention any of the controversies Kone was involved in.
Kone is now employed at the The University of Texas Medical School at Houston, his previous employer, as a visiting professor. He will be paid about $251,000 this year, according to the school/s human resources department.
But Kone/s impact on UF isn/t over.
In an investigation into one of his complaints, the results of which were released Monday, UF determined that some hiring practices have violated the spirit of a memo sent out in September 2005. The memo prohibits UF from re-hiring employees who have entered the state/s Deferred Retirement Option Program (DROP) before they have officially retired.
Under the DROP program, employees can retire in order to collect retirement checks but must wait a month before they can be re-hired, though the state Legislature changed that period to six months this year.
The investigation found that, out of five employees who were reviewed, two were offered jobs at UF again before they had officially retired. One employee would have been invited back, but the offer was rescinded.
None of the cases involved a breach of state law, the investigation concluded.
Nevertheless, Paula Fussell, UF/s interim vice president of Human Resource Services, said UF is looking to put a new policy in place requiring a review of all cases in which UF is considering re-hiring an employee in DROP.
Fussell said that as of February, about 20 UF employees in the program had been re-hired and were potentially eligible to receive a regular paycheck in addition to a retirement paycheck, known as "double-dipping."
