UC Board of Regents chair Gerald Parsky and UC President Robert Dynes gave anemic testimony yesterday about why the UC has been wasting the taxpayers money with bloated compensation packages, bonuses and other employee perks for the system’s high-level employees.
Parsky basically told legislators that UC has ignored reforms passed in the early 1990s.
According to the SF Chronicle, Parsky said, "The policies that were put in place
post-1992 were very clear, very extensive and called for public disclosure. The letter and spirit of the principles have not been followed in every instance."
Dynes said UC accountability systems are "broken" and that he deserves an "incomplete" rather than a letter grade for his performance as president.
It is outrageous that the Regents chair and the UC president admitted that the University ignored rules that have been on the books for more than a decade but didn’t offer any major resolution of the problem. UC has asked its external auditing firm, PriceWaterhouseCooper, to review staff compensation packages to make sure policies were followed. The state is also conducting an audit. Parsky hinted that the Regents might fire someone, "but not without full knowledge of the facts."
Okay, great, conduct your audits. But once the audits are in, heads need to roll. Not only have university officials tried to get around state law (compliance with the California Civil Rights Initiative, Prop. 209), but apparently they don’t feel compelled to follow their own rules either.
It is time for the governor to get involved on behalf of the taxpayers. He needs to tell the Board of Regents to clean house or tell them that he will. (We know that the governor doesn’t have a problem asking appointees to resign.) The taxpayers and UC students deserve to have people running the university who have better fiduciary skills than the current crowd.