President Thomas Fallo must admire the Woodward and Bernstein approach and “follow the money.”

If his $268, 840, which is $193,000 more than the average of single-college CEO, according to the “Daily Breeze” wasn’t enough, than EC potentially may have to dig deeper into their pockets or look for another candidate to fill his shoes.

Fallo was recently a finalist “American Idol” style to be the head of Mira Costa College, who was about to offer Fallo a pay raise of $72,000 which means he would be making significantly more money than he all ready was.

Fallo experienced a similar circumstance when in 2004 Ventura County Community College District offered him more money so in response EC gave Fallo a 14 percent increase.

The local press such as “The Daily Breeze” and EC is beginning to question whether Fallo was using the Mira Costa College job as a means to leverage even more money from EC even though EC is facing some budget cuts.

It can be argued that with the stock market plummeting, and with CEO’s of major car companies and wall street brokers going bankrupt, Fallo deciding that this is the best time to consider a job for more money, is a fair option.

Fallo is a smart man and has done a lot of good for EC, but it would be ridiculous for any college-let alone EC, to offer Fallo a pay raise of that amount.

Imagine the many cuts on educational jobs or the education programs that would have to be cut just to allow Fallo to be paid more.

EC should be able to question Fallo’s intentions, but does it really matter now since he didn’t get the job anyway, however EC should wonder what would have happened had he got the job.

As much as Fallo has done for the campus for him to be shopping around other schools puts EC in a predicament because now EC should take into consideration and realize that Fallo can and probably will do this again or worse yet, he might have other offers on the table.

It is not to say that Fallo exercising his right to a job hunt was wrong because it may seem like a crazy idea to turn down a job for more money in this economy, but by Fallo doing it in a undercover way doesn’t reflect too well on EC’s part.

With EC facing early stages of an accreditation problem, maybe getting rid of Fallo during this time is not the right thing to do at the moment, but they should exercise their option to look at future candidates because more than likely Fallo does have other options lining up and if Fallo is willing to prepare for his own kind of “economic stimulus” by jumping schools than EC should prepare to bring in a new captain to lead EC through a new era.

If Fallo does in the future end up leaving EC then EC should congratulate him on his many contributions and let him be, no matter how hard it may be on the campus. But with in the bad there is always some good and who knows EC could use a change and bring in some new blood.