SUNY school reviews hiring practices in wake of officials' wild claims

ALBANY — A state medical university in Syracuse did not fully research the background of a former chief of staff who resigned earlier this week after a Times Union story raised questions about his apparent fabrications in his professional background.

A member of the school's faculty said the university's president, Danielle Laraque-Arena, recently acknowledged that not all of the past employers of the former chief of staff and senior vice president, Sergio A. Garcia, had been contacted prior to his hiring last year.

A copy of Garcia's resume on file with the State University of New York indicates he was a "chief of staff" from 2004 to 2007 in a role in which he had provided "overall management and evaluations of Bureau's global operations and programs totaling USD $465 million. Aided Secretary of State to promote and ensure inter-agency coordination on policy and programming and further coordinated with congressional leaders and staff."

The Department of State confirmed that Garcia had been employed during that period as a foreign affairs officer, but did not indicate he held a title as a "chief of staff." Two other sections in that portion of Garcia's three-page resume were blacked out.

A spokesman for Upstate Medical University denied that Laraque-Arena had disclosed recently that Garcia's background was not fully vetted. But in a statement issued this week to faculty members, she indicated that the university's hiring practices are under review.

"I want to assure you these recent issues are being addressed vigorously by my office," the president's statement reads. "We are conducting a full investigation into the process by which this individual was hired as well as an internal and external audit of our personnel processes. The results will be reported to you."

The Times Union's story, posted online May 13, revealed that a number of claims Garcia made in a videotaped speech last fall at a university lecture hall do not stand up to scrutiny. Among them were Garcia's account of being present at what he said was the 2011 bombing in Afghanistan that took the life of a young diplomat; that he had been interviewed for a State Department post by then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; and that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice remains his close friend and mentor.

Garcia's account of the bombing — which actually took place in 2013, months after Garcia had left Afghanistan for an academic post in Ohio — was refuted by witnesses who were there, and sources close to Powell and Rice shot down Garcia's assertions about them.

"I misspoke when it came to the bombing," Garcia told the Times Union in an interview earlier this week, following his resignation. "There are people who have done a lot worse things at Upstate."

Garcia also acknowledged that he was not aware that his speech last fall was being videotaped.

Garcia denied allegations that he has regularly claimed to university officials and others that he is an "attorney," including in the presence of Laraque-Arena. His resume indicates he earned a bachelor's degree in international law from the University of the Americas in Mexico, but does not have a graduate-level law degree, which is required in the United States to practice law.

"I am a lawyer," he said. "I do have a bachelors of law but I do not practice law. ... A bachelors of law is a recognized legal degree. ... I never represented myself as an attorney in any meeting."

However, Garcia then acknowledged being identified as an attorney in meetings. "Even the president would go so far as to say that, 'Yes, Sergio is an attorney,' or a lawyer, actually, and we had another member of our senior team who is also an attorney, but we never acted as such," he said.

Garcia declined to discuss his debunked claims about interactions with Powell and Rice, and his assertion that he had worked in the White House in the immediate aftermath of the September 2001 terror attacks.

At the university, some faculty members have privately expressed concerns about how Garcia, who was initially hired as chief of staff, had his roles quickly expanded to oversee human resources, facilities and the university's police force.

Garcia, 43, had been a $340,000-a-year senior vice president and chief of staff since his appointment in March 2017. The school is the Syracuse region's largest employer, with more than 9,500 workers.

"I am a non-traditional leader," he said. "I did not rise through the ranks of hospital administration or academics or higher eduction. I cut my teeth on operations. ... My view of the world in coming to Syracuse and the other places that I have been is to deliver good, to deliver change, to deliver impact and to deliver efficiencies."

He acknowledged that, despite his claim in the lecture last October — which was titled "Courage Under Fire" — he never received a law degree from the University of Oklahoma.

"I made some misstatements. I did not get my degree from Oklahoma," he said, but added that the college he attended in Mexico "was always tied" to the University of Oklahoma.

"I am not going to go down that slippery slope to relitigate what I said or what I didn't say," Garcia said. "All I know is that I have given that same talk that I gave in October many times, and I probably got some inaccuracies previously, but I know most of the time I was dead-on in dates in remembering who I spoke to."