The President of the College of DuPage in Illinois attempts to swindle $20 million from the state, but gets foiled by one leaked email.

Charlie Tyson at Inside Higher Ed has the story:

Community college president’s leaked email shows plan to trade political support for state funds

A careless email has cost one community college president $20 million, and potentially saved Illinois taxpayers that same amount.

The state of Illinois will not release capital funds previously appropriated to the College of DuPage after an email written by Robert Breuder, the college’s president, fueled charges that the institution was needlessly chasing public dollars.

A May 9 email Breuder wrote to the college’s board, obtained by the government watchdog group For the Good of Illinois through a Freedom of Information Act request, reveals the college president’s plan to pressure the state into releasing $20 million that it had appropriated years before but never spent.

There was one problem. The state had appropriated the money for projects that the 28,000-student college had already completed using its own funds.

To Breuder and his supporters, this story is about the unpredictability of state support and the need for scrappy community colleges to work every possible angle to get enough money to thrive. But to critics who have pounced on the situation, this is a story about a community college that was able to pay for projects itself, yet tried to grab every penny it could from taxpayers — for the sake of luxury, not necessity.