University of California officials will face state legislators
today in the second of two senate education committee hearings
prompted by concerns over the university’s compensation
practices.
State senators will get the chance today to follow up with UC
President Robert Dynes, who apologized for a general lack of
transparency at the last hearing on Feb. 8.
Legislators will also question UC Board of Regents Chairman
Gerald Parksy on the board’s responsibility to ensure public
accountability at the university.
Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, said she hopes the hearing
today will answer her questions about how the university allowed
unreported compensations to build up.
“I want to see also what is being done to help me
understand how we got here and what we’re doing right
now,” Romero said toward the end of the last hearing.
Today’s hearing comes a week after the San Francisco
Chronicle reported that Dynes suggested in a letter to Sen. Abel
Maldonado, R-Santa Maria, that the UC may have violated its own
policies by giving top executives extra compensation without
approval from the university’s regents.
Legislators expressed frustration with the UC’s
compensation practices at the first hearing in which Dynes
apologized for the university’s lack of transparency and
pledged ongoing review and reform.
Maldonado said while he appreciates Dynes apology, the
university must give a full account of what policies were violated
and to what extent, something that the university has not yet
done.
The senate hearings were prompted by public concern over
reported secrecy in the university’s compensation of top
officials.
Last November, The Chronicle reported that the university failed
to make public millions of dollars in bonuses, raises and other
forms of compensation paid to its employees, kicking off a deluge
of criticism directed at the UC’s top administration.
Since then, other compensation issues have surfaced. During the
first hearing, legislators questioned Dynes on the reassignment of
former Provost MRC Greenwood to a faculty position with a salary of
$301,840 after she was found to have violated UC
conflict-of-interest policies. UC officials have said her removal
from the post of provost is the harshest punishment the UC could
have levied.
The Chronicle reported last week that Dynes admitted in his
letter to Maldonado that UC officials failed to tell the regents
that Greenwood had been promised 15 months of paid leave at her
administrative salary when the regents approved her appointment as
provost. The $25,153 per month paid-leave agreement became public
only after Greenwood resigned amid an investigation of a potential
conflict of interest in her hiring decisions.
During the first hearing, Dynes said the UC has not always been
accountable to the public in its executive-pay practices.
“We have not always met the standards others hold us to in
matters of compensation and compensation disclosure,” Dynes
told the senate subcommittee on higher education.
But Dynes promised that reforms are under way at the university
and added that the regents have begun to implement a series of
reviews which will provide a full account of what needs to be
changed in the university’s policies and practices.
As part of the UC’s review process, the university has
commissioned an external audit and developed committees to analyze
compensation policies at the university.
In addition, the state Legislature is proceeding with its own
state audit of the university’s pay practices.