Discussion regarding compensation issues dominated
Wednesday’s UC Board of Regents meeting at UCLA, in which
committees of the board met in closed sessions and took action on
compensation matters including job slotting and executive
salaries.
The special committee on compensation slotted a number of senior
administrators into salary ranges and decided individual
compensations of other executives during its closed session
Wednesday. The full board is expected to vote on these items
today.
Few students were present at Wednesday’s meeting, but
around campus, members of the UC Sudan Divestment Taskforce asked
students to attend a rally today, when the board plans to vote on
divesting from Sudan.
Adam Sterling, cochairman of the student taskforce, said over
1,000 students will gather in support of UC divesting from Sudan,
who has been committing what the U.S. government calls a genocide
against the people of Darfur.
During the regents’ discussion on compensation, State Sen.
Abel Maldonado, R-Santa Maria, urged the regents to not prematurely
expand the scope of job slotting before a state audit of university
compensation practices is completed.
The job-slotting structure approved by the regents in January
consists of set salary ranges for executives that are determined by
the market value of similar jobs. It also allows UC President
Robert Dynes to set salaries within those ranges without regent
approval for administrators who are not among the 32 UC employees
with the highest salaries.
Maldonado said the plan of job slotting seemed to give too much
power to the president without a regental check.
“There needs to be more oversight in regards to the UC
Office of the President, not less,” Maldonado said.
But UC President Robert Dynes said there seems to be a
misunderstanding of the motivation of job slotting.
In the past, regents would be asked to approve salaries without
knowing the specifics of a position and the salaries for comparable
positions.
“If anything, it’s better oversight on the
regents’ part,” Dynes said.
Maldonado also asked the board to support two pieces of
legislation he said would promote transparency, disclosure and
accountability at the UC.
One bill would require California’s public
higher-education institutions to provide enough information for an
annual third-party report on compensation. Another bill would
require the governing bodies of these institutions to post all
compensation policies online. The bills will be heard in the
Legislature in April and need a two-thirds vote and a majority
vote, respectively, to pass.
Dynes said he agrees with the “spirit of the two
bills,” but hopes to modify some aspects of them.
The bills come after criticism of the UC for failing to report
billions of dollars in compensation to UC executives. UC officials
admitted to compensation violations in some of their practices and
promised reform in two Senate hearings conducted by the state
Legislature.
With the public’s increased scrutiny of UC compensation
matters and interest in transparency, Regent Chairman Gerald Parsky
defended the regents’ decision to hold a series of
compensation committee meetings in closed session.
Parsky said some compensation actions must be taken in closed
session to protect the privacy of individuals whose performance may
be evaluated during the compensation discussions. This is allowed
under special provisions under the Educational Code.
The argument that all compensation actions should occur in open
session because of California open-meeting laws represents “a
fundamental misunderstanding of the law and the way in which the
regents do business,” he added.
The board also discussed how their procedures could be more
efficient. A special committee voted in favor of recommending to
the full board to extend board meetings from a day and a half to
two in order to devote more time to strategic planning for the
university.
Regent Sherry Lansing said that in the current system the
regents cannot discuss overall strategies for the future.
“Most of us feel we’re spending all of our time
going through the crisis of the day. … A lot of us have ideas and
we would like to be involved in thinking strategically,”
Lansing said.
The board also discussed changing the committee structure of the
board to make regent meetings more efficient by establishing an
executive committee and a number of other committees to better
delegate the tasks of the board.
Student Regent Adam Rosenthal said there should be structural
reforms made to the board, but was concerned the executive
committee might create “two tiers of regents” and make
it more difficult for some regents to have a voice.
Per Regent George Marcus’ proposal, the executive
committee would be made up of the chair and vice chair of the
regents, as well as the chairs of the committee on finance and
educational policy.
Regent-designate Steve Schreiner of the Alumni Associations of
the UC said the regents need to consider whether committee meetings
need to be conducted during full board meetings. He said creating
more committees and cramming more discussions into the two-day
schedule will create more problems.
“I just see us coming into a gridlock and a standstill at
… meetings,” he said.