An executive director, as a rule, doesn't make choices, but carries the board's choices out. Jeff Fortin Tam (the president of the board of directors of GNOME) has pretty much confirmed this: http://jeff.ecchi.ca/blog/2015/09/13/outrageous-outreach/

I'm not disputing GNOME had (has?) a problem - I'm not following anyway - or Garrett having an agenda (I mean come on, the LF never gave the community a voice, and the community never cared), but there seems to be no reason to accuse Sandler of mismanaging funds.