LOUISIANA COMPUTERS STOLEN After thefts, UNO loses hundreds of thousands in property | News for New Orleans, Louisiana | Local News | News and Weather for New Orleans | wwltv.com:


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After thefts, UNO loses hundreds of thousands in property

06:55 PM CDT on Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Paul Murphy / Eyewitness News

pmurphy@wwltv.com

NEW ORLEANS – The University of New Orleans is now facing a possible $15.3 million cut to help offset a huge state budget deficit in the coming year.

In these tough economic times, the school can ill afford to simply lose millions of dollars worth of property. But, according to Louisiana's legislative auditor, that's exactly what happened at UNO.

Students call the auditor's findings disappointing.

"I think it's really, truly terrible just due to the fact that we have all these budget cuts coming, and they're already going to cut a lot of stuff from us, so to have all this stuff missing it's really a travesty, honestly," said student Judy Morgan.

According to the audit, more than $282,000 worth of property is missing in the current fiscal year. That's in addition to $2.4 million worth of items missing over the previous three years.

The items include 50 desktop computers, 79 laptops and 12 multimedia projectors.

UNO Chancellor Tim Ryan says much of the missing items were stolen by contractors working on school buildings after Hurricane Katrina.

"We found that they stole millions of dollars worth of computers and projectors,” Ryan said. “They stole the chairs from my office.”

Ryan said since the audit, UNO has increased security on campus. The steps include beefing up the UNO Police Department and hiring an investigator to follow up on the missing items. Locks have been re-keyed and more sensitive buildings are now controlled by card readers. And a new computer tracking system will be installed on all new laptops.

State Rep. Austin Badon, D-New Orleans East, said he's satisfied with the action taken so far.

"It's a continual process," said Badon, a UNO alum. "The bad guys are always looking for new ways to beat the system, and we have to be equally as creative."

The legislative auditor states in his report that there is a risk that sensitive information could be recovered from some of the computers stolen from the university. Chancellor Ryan says that possibility certainly exists, but it's not very likely.

"We've done an analysis of that, and we're relatively confident that the data is protected because it's kept in servers that are very well protected," said Ryan.

According to the legislative auditor, this is the third consecutive year UNO has reported significant amounts of movable property that could not be located.

The report urges the university management to strengthen internal controls to make sure the property is secured and monitored.