CA: UC salary revamp adopted -- but regents also OK more raises (officials mum on details)

SFGate.com ^ | 1/20/06 | Tanya Schevitz, Todd Wallack

[NormsRevenge]

San Diego -- The University of California, under fire for its pay practices, gave final approval Thursday to two proposals to overhaul the way it hands out compensation and doled out a new round of increases for managers.

The university Board of Regents unanimously approved a plan that gives UC President Robert Dynes discretion to increase hundreds of executives' pay within large salary bands, ...

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The regents also endorsed a plan to ban administrators from negotiating severance agreements worth more than $100,000 without the regents' approval. The board acted one month after The Chronicle reported that UC had secretly given a settlement worth at least $460,000 to a former UC Davis vice chancellor after she threatened to file a discrimination suit.

Regents also voted to give extra pay to roughly a dozen highly paid employees. But despite pledges of greater transparency, UC refused to release any details until after the meetings ended Thursday.

"In the last two or three months, we have seen a shroud of secrecy around UC,'' said Tom Kise, an aide to state Sen. Abel Maldonado, R-Santa Maria (Santa Barbara County), who has introduced legislation to force the university to disclose more information about how much it pays employees. "It's the same old practice of being less transparent."

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Separately, UC spokesmen defended a secret $248,000 payment that the university made to UC San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox last fall on top of her $350,000 salary.

UC said the payment, first reported Thursday by the San Diego Union-Tribune, was to compensate Fox because she had to forfeit a paid sabbatical at North Carolina State University to come to UC San Diego. But some observers criticized the award.

[Tzimisce]

Anyone else think it's ironic we're giving pay raises to devote communists?