This could be bad, and I’m not sure how it will shake out. Last Fall, I ended a collaboration with an investigator at another university by mutual agreement so I could save the grant money I was paying him to use on other projects. the grants person in my administration supposedly executes the paperwork to modify the contract with that university, or so I thought.
This week I find out he never got around to doing that contract amendment before he left his job at our august institution. He just stopped paying the invoices the other school submitted to us. His boss found out and tried to retroactively terminate the contract this week saying her office won’t pay out on anymore invoices. The other school isn’t having any of it. They are saying we are obligated to pay the invoices they submitted under the contract as it was executed.
So, my grants management person sent me a message today asking me, “please advise”. How the hell am I supposed to advise? I don’t know how to fix this mess they made. I’m supposed to age the talent, not management. We’re talking many thousands of dollars of grant money I can ill afford to lose, and my past experience has me worrying I’ll be hung out to dry.