Right answer by FAMU

On the surface, it might seem a good idea for Florida A&M University to have accepted state legislators' offer of $425,000 to pay for additional accountants who would have checked the school's books. Since the catch was that the Legislature also would assign the accountants to the school, however, interim FAMU president Castell Bryant was correct to decline the offer, at least for now, and the Board of Governors, which runs the public university system, was correct to agree with her.

It helps that the board knows Dr. Bryant; she was a member until January, when she took on the job of cleaning up the well-documented financial mismanagement at the historically black university, whose auditors report has spent at least $51 million more than it had budgeted and paid its staff $19 million less than state records said it could. The board also knows that Dr. Bryant is an experienced administrator who has instituted a plan to start correcting the problems. Those include measures to assess just how bad the budget shortage is and a moratorium on cellphone, travel and other routine expenses.

Unless Dr. Bryant and the trustees say otherwise, a takeover by legislators of FAMU's accounting responsibilities would be premature. It also would raise the specter of a state takeover that legislators long have denied could happen but alumni long have feared could. Since accountability goes both ways, the Legislature and Board of Governors should do their job of providing the state assistance needed and state oversight required, but let Dr. Bryant do her job unless she demonstrates she can't.