I had an opportunity to work with Gerry Parsky quite a bit during the President’s first election in 2000 – Parksy headed up the President’s campaign for California and I was serving at the time as Executive Director of the California Republican Party.  Generally, I would say that it would be a fair characterization to say that Parksy and I were not close.  I could pen an entire column on that whole set-up, and my observations of Parsky’s job in his role for the President.  But that is for another day (maybe).  Let’s suffice it to say that I don’t see much or hear much about Parsky these days, other than occasional stories in the news as he is an appointee to the University of California system’s Board of Regents, and right now he is serving as the head of the board.  The nexus to Parsky in this commentary will come to play in about five seconds…
 
When you sift through 80+ websites in a morning looking for political news, you occasionally come across the kind of story that would make you choke on your Wheaties — and this morning that happened when I got to the San Francisco Chronicle.  There is a story there, UC Regents Approve $1 Million in Improper Pay for 60 Top Execs, that is mind boggling.
 
Imagine that you find out that for many years, the U.C. System has been literally over-paying like 62 senior executives…and not by small sums of money.  In the case of University of California San Diego Vice Chancellor Ed Holmes, he was overpaid by $130,000!

Confronted with what to do about this, Parsky (the nexus) led the Regents to retroactively approve these overpayments.  If this was a private university system, well, frankly, this kind of matter would be between Parsky and his board of directors and school donors.  But this is a public institution!  Where do Parsky and the Regents get the audacity to authorize, after the fact, overpayments like this?  How about asking these folks for the money back? 
 
State Senator Abel Maldonado, who has been a vocal critic of many of Parsky’s policies, is quoted in the article as saying, "They are trying to cover all of their tracks doing once again what is in the best interest of the president of the University of California, not what is in the best interest of the students," Maldonado said. "UC is sending a bad message to the public and students: It’s OK to waste taxpayer dollars."
 
Maldonado is right on, here.  The "Imperial Regents" (thus called because they serve 12 year terms in office) are apparently so far out of touch with the electorate that they seem to have forgotten that they serve in positions of PUBLIC TRUST. 
 
I won’t spend a lot of time on this issue of Governor Schwarzenegger authorizing $150 million in tax dollars to be made available as a loan for controversial stem cell research other than to say that President Bush was totally right to veto public spending on a procedure that many of us consider to be treading on the sanctity of human life.  Clearly I have significant areas of policy disagreement with the Governor.  Most Republicans would as he is to the left of center on a number of key policy areas.  On balance, he would still be a much better Governor than Phil Angelides.  But reading the articles today on his decision to authorize this funding made me unwell, and fortunately I am not scheduled to work at a Victory ’06 phone bank tonight.  If I were, I would cancel.  This one is hard to swallow.

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 21st, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.