Posted on 02/13/2006 8:29:26 AM PST by NormsRevenge
It took all of 48 hours for University of California President Robert Dynes' vow to begin a new era of honesty and transparency on compensation issues to be undercut by fresh examples of institutional arrogance and secrecy.
Last Wednesday, Dynes appeared before a state Senate committee to take questions after a series of newspaper reports detailed how UC officials had hidden millions of dollars in compensation for top executives and given sweetheart deals to departing officials. Many of these deals were cut without the required approval of UC regents. Many blatantly violated policies the UC system adopted in the early 1990s after a previous pay scandal.
Given this backdrop, it was no surprise that senators went at Dynes – formerly chancellor at UCSD – so sharply. To his credit, Dynes abandoned the mealy-mouthed pseudo-apologies he offered late last year. Instead, he admitted something had gone haywire.
“It is with real regret that I have come to acknowledge that we have not always met the standards others hold us to in matters of compensation and compensation disclosure,” Dynes said. “My ethics are upset by this.”
It sounded good at the time, but it sure seems like spin now. In UC's first test after Dynes' mea culpa, it failed badly.
On Friday, a Sacramento Bee editorial took up one of the worst sweetheart deals: a two-year, $460,000 contract for a new job with no duties and no office for Celeste Rose, previously a UC Davis vice chancellor. This payoff came despite the fact that UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef didn't think much of the job Rose was doing as vice chancellor and wanted her gone. The assumption has been that Rose was paid off to head off a lawsuit in which she alleged racial and gender discrimination. (She is African-American.)
The Bee reported that the deal was cut after members of the California Legislative Black Caucus made inquiries to Dynes' office and Regent Tom Sayles about Rose's job status – inquiries which can only be seen as attempts to pressure Dynes and Vanderhoef.
This gives the compensation scandal a new dimension: the possible involvement of lawmakers and a regent. So, given Dynes' vow of a new era of openness, his staff would be willing to say which lawmakers intervened, right?
Wrong. Dynes' spokesman, Paul Schwartz, wrote in an e-mail that identifying the lawmakers involved would have a “'chilling effect' on governmental deliberative processes.” He denied UC felt pressured by their intervention.
But UC Davis spokeswoman Lisa Lapin said the contacts were “among many factors” in Vanderhoef's decision. Meanwhile, the head of the Black Caucus – Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally, D-Compton – flatly denied in a Friday phone interview that Rose's settlement was a caucus issue.
So Dynes' office won't tell us about calls that Dymally suggests were never made – and asserts that its decision is somehow principled.
This isn't transparency. What senior UC officials apparently see as damage control looks like a cover-up to us.
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