The 2009 "Toolbox" Report and the Japanese Garden (& Other Issues)

Given the ongoing budget crisis, UCLA formed a task force to look at various revenue-generating options.  The report of the task force is dated April 24, 2009.  Among the possibilities considered was the sale of various properties including the Japanese Garden.  The report indicates that consultations with the state Attorney General were underway well before the 2010 court decision that permitted the sale, even though it was inconsistent with the existing terms of the donation.


The report explores other areas such as faculty pay, fund raising, "branding," and tuition.  You can read the full report at the link below (scroll towards the bottom of this post.


Below is the Table of Contents.  Below that is the section on the Japanese Garden:

I. Task Force Chargeand Process p. 1

II. Principles forReview of Revenue Creation Proposals p. 2

III. Summary ofRecommendations p. 4

IV. Major Issues andRecommendations

                   Student Fees p. 6

                   Enrollment of Nonresident Undergraduates p. 14

                   Development of New Academic Programs & Services p. 15

                   Research Funding p. 19

                   Faculty Compensation Plan p. 21

                   Brand Extension Licensing p. 23

                   Fundraising Opportunities p. 25

                   Sale of Underutilized Property p. 27

Appendix A: UCLAApproval Process for Revenue-Generating

Courses and Programs p.30

Appendix B: RevenueGenerating Course and Programs

Administrative Guide p.34

Appendix C: Guidelines for endowedchairs p. 36

=============

Task Force Membership:

• Kathryn Atchison, Vice Provost for Intellectual Property and Industry Relations
• Hilu Bloch, Associate Dean & CAO, Anderson Graduate School of Management
• Robin Garrell, Professor and Vice Chair, Academic Senate
• Janina Montero, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs
• Sam Morabito, Administrative Vice Chancellor
• Steven A. Olsen, Vice Chancellor, Finance, Budget & Capital Programs (chair)
• No-Hee Park, Dean, School of Dentistry
• Cathy Sandeen, Dean, University Extension
• Michael Schill, Dean, School of Law
• Rhea Turteltaub, Vice Chancellor, External Affairs
• David Unruh, Assistant Provost, Academic Program Development
• Kang Wang, Professor, School of Engineering and Applied Science

===========

Section on Japanese Garden

From pp. 27-28:

The Carter Estate:

The Carter Estate, located at 626 Siena Way, Bel Air, about one milefrom campus, is situated on 0.85 acres and includes a two story residence andan adjacent guest house in approximately 7300 gross square feet. The house wasvacated by Mrs. Carter in early 2006. The house, which has remained vacantsince Mrs. Carter’s departure, is currently being managed by UCLA AssetManagement.

In June, 2007, the value of this property was appraised at $9,000,000.The University is free to sell this property (via a competitive public bidprocess) but the proceeds must fund seven endowments specified by Mr. Carterincluding endowed chairs in the College, Anderson and the School of Medicine, amaintenance endowment for the Japanese Gardens, the establishment of an arthistory research center in the College, a student awards fund for Anderson anda discretionary fund for the director of the Jules Stein Eye Institute. In2006, the estimate of the amount needed to fund the corpus for these endowmentswas $4.7 million. As such, the net proceeds from the sale of the home would benet of the $4.7 million.

The Japanese Gardens:

The UCLA Hannah Carter Japanese Garden and the UCLA Carter House(described above) were, prior to December 1964 part of a single parcel ofapproximately 1.94 acres. In 1964 the Gardens portion of the site was separatedfrom the Carter House portion. The 1964 grant deed transferring the property tothe Regents was amended in 1982 with the requirement that the University namesthe garden for Mrs. Carter and retain it in perpetuity. 

Significant research has beencompleted on the process (via the California Attorney General) required toremove the restriction on the Garden so that the University could then sell theproperty. We are advised that it would be possible to remove the restriction butthe outcome is not certain. And, there would likely be some politicalramifications from various groups about the sale of the Gardens as a potentialbuilding site.

In 2007, the MAI appraisal indicates a value of $5.7 million if theproperty can be sold without the deed restriction to maintain it as the Gardensand $3.4 million with the restriction intact.

The combined value of selling both the Carter House and the Gardens(with the restriction on the Gardens in place) was $12.5 million. The value ofthe combined properties without restrictions was estimated in 2007 at $14.7million. Of course property values since 2007 have declined, thus an updatedappraisal would be required to ascertain the current value of these properties.

==============

Link to report:

Open publication - Free publishing - More branding

It is not known how much time was spent by the Task Force specifically on the Japanese Garden issue.  During the period in which the task force operated, UCLA had a website for the garden which has since been taken down.  However, you can see the website as it was - and as it was available to the task force at:
http://web.archive.org/web/20100815093728/http://www.japanesegarden.ucla.edu/

No Bee Link Here

The Sacramento Bee has updated its database of all state salaries by name, including UC employees.  No, I won't give you the link although you can readily search it out.  

Yours truly writes a weekly blog for a group called the Employment Policy Research Association.  As it happens, this week's blog for that group tells you why I won't supply the link to the Bee's database.  (The fact that the blog entry and the database appeared in the same week was a coincidence.)

=====================

http://www.employmentpolicy.org/topic/402/blog/mitchell%E2%80%99s-musings-1-30-12-matters-degree

Mitchell’s Musings1-30-12: Matters of Degree

Daniel J.B. Mitchell

Let’s start with the admission that I am not a lawyer, letalone a constitutional scholar.  So Ican’t really evaluate the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent unanimous decision whichvoided the conviction of someone apparently dealing drugs that was obtainedbased on GPS evidence.  All I can say isthat the justices seemed upset with the idea of the police attaching a deviceto a private car which allowed tracking of the car’s movements and eventualfinding of incriminating evidence.  Trustme; I will ultimately relate that decision to an employment concern.

It appears (to me) that the degree of efficiency in thetechnology utilized played an important role in the GPS decision although partof the discomfort of the court seemed related to the intrusion on the vehicleneeded to attach the device.  It alsoappears (to me) that if the police had done old fashioned following of thevehicle around with another car - and eventually found incriminating evidenceas a result - that approach to obtaining evidence would have been OK with theCourt.

If that interpretation is correct, there seems – to thisnon-lawyer at least – to be only a matter of degree between high-techsurveillance - which produced massive amounts of data according to the Courtdecision – and old fashioned tailing. But obviously the former was much more efficient and much less costlyand labor intensive, than the latter.  Ifprivacy violations are cheap, they are more likely to occur than if they areexpensive.  

There are analogies in other controversies in the newsinvolving evolving technology.  Therecent brouhaha surrounding the congressional political battle betweenHollywood and Internet providers over measures to prevent piracy of films andsuch has similarities to the GPS decision. If you saw the film, The King’sSpeech, you may recall the scene – taking place in the 1930s – in which thespeech therapist, using a new home phonograph record device said to be fromAmerica – records the King. 

So it technically was possible in the 1930s, with what musthave been an expensive device, to copy phonograph records – possibly violatingcopyright.  After World War II, lessexpensive home tape recorders and wire recorders became available.  It was becoming easier to copy, say, radio broadcastsof the top-ten tunes, again possibly violating copyright.  But record companies didn’t panic since themeans of copying and distributing was cumbersome involving reels of tape orspools of wire.

More concern concerning copyrights and intellectual propertyarose when home video cassette recorders came along and movies might thereforebe copied from TV broadcasts.  TheBetamax case ultimately went to the U.S. Supreme Court on that issue.  But home cassette recorders were allowed inthe Court’s 1984 decision.  Thatcontroversy occurred before there was an effective Internet which would allowrelatively easy distribution of copied movies by digital means.

In short, courts and legislators are now continually facedwith changes in technology which make past transgressions that were onceinherently limited much easier.  Exactlywhere you draw the line between what is and what isn’t going to be allowed is amatter of degree and discretion.  And adecision at one point in time may be made obsolete as technology advances.  There really is no absolute, timeless rule.

That observation brings me to issues of privacy andtechnology – and employment.  A number ofnewspapers and other organizations have obtained court judgments saying thatpublic payrolls and public pension rolls are public documents – and presumablyalways were.  Therefore, it is OK to postthem wholesale on the web with the namesof the employee or retiree included. 

Now it may well have been the case in a simpler age that onecould have gone to a public office and obtained information on payments toemployee X or retiree Y, using state and local equivalents of the federalFreedom of Information Act.  But copyingdown the entire payroll of an agency would not have been a simple matter.  And wholesale and easy distributing theinformation, if one had the patience to copy it, would also have been difficultand costly.  But currently such wholesalecopying and distribution has become easy, thanks to computer technology and theInternet.  With that technologicaladvance, the process today raises issues of privacy and potential identitytheft.

Most private employers would not think that publishing theirpayrolls wholesale, disclosing pay named employee by named employee, was a goodidea as a human resource practice.  Weknow that no private employers do it.  Andamong the employers who do not choose to do it are the very newspapers makingavailable public employer databases. Surely, their readers might like to find out what they (the newspapers)pay their editors, columnists, reporters, and – who knows – even their floorsweepers.  But the fact that readersmight be interested and that the newspapers already have the data on their ownpayrolls has not impelled any newspapers I know of even to contemplate suchpublication.

When pushed, the newspaper response is that the public has aright to know where its tax money goes.[1]  But actually there are lines drawn.  So far there have been no court decisions –again that I know of – that make wholesale health records of public employeesavailable by name, even though taxpayers fund public health insurance benefitsfor employees.  Internal personnel fileswith performance appraisals are not routinely made public on a wholesale basis.But couldn’t it be argued that the public has a right to know about healthexpenses and performance reviews?  So, infact, as in the GPS case, it is a matter of degree and balance.  Not everything funded by taxpayers is in facta public document.

There are ways of balancing publication of public payrolldata against privacy and identity theft concerns.  Pay rates by occupation can be made available– but without names – so that outsiders can judge whether public pay rates arebeing set correctly.  The Californiastate controller, for example, has published municipal pay rates without names.  One can learn, for example, that one “policeevidence clerk” in the City of Santa Monica in base salary and overtime earned$60,228 while the other earned $59,923.[2]  But no names are provided.  If you are worried about whether Santa Monicaoverpays or underpays its police evidence clerks, now you have the data todecide.

The general exception about naming names in the privatesector, at least for publically-traded firms, is that top executive pay is madepublic (with the names known).  Thatpractice might also be followed in the public sector.  And it typically is - and has been.  What the President of the United States ispaid has not been top secret.  And notethat presidents, governors, mayors, or Supreme Court justices are publicfigures.  Police evidence clerks are not.

Undoubtedly, the GPS decision by the Supreme Court will berevisited in the future as technology changes. What if it becomes possible to track a car without actually attaching adevice?  Cars of the future may havedevices built in that transmit information for internal operating reasons.  What if the police pick up those signals anduse them for tracking? 

Bottom line: The public employee payroll issue also needsrenewed court and legislative attention. Many more people are affected. That is, many more people work in the public sector than there are drugdealers who police might want to tail. It is clear that those newspapers that are publishing payrolls by nameare set on doing so.  Sometimes they simplysay it is legal – which it apparently is at present.  But they don’t routinely publish, say, thehome addresses of crime victims or the names of rape victims even though thesecan be obtained in public police records. So they cannot really take the position that they simply publisheverything that is legal without making any judgments about what is appropriate.  Since their good judgment on crime victims isevidently not going to be applied to public payroll records, only if courts andlegislators say it is not legal would wholesale public payroll publishing byname come to an end.

---

[1]I rather doubt that the fact that subsidized mailing rates would be viewed bynewspaper publishers as grounds to force them to make their payrolls public,even though one might argue that public money is involved in the subsidy.  Newspapers also receive other public benefitsincluding antitrust exemptions in some circumstances and, of course, FirstAmendment protections. 

[2]Figures are for 2010.  The full databaseis at http://lgcr.sco.ca.gov/.

New Payroll System Coming: Maybe You Should Save Some Cash Just in Case

The Daily Bruin today carries an article about a new systemwide payroll system that is supposed to be installed in stages through 2013.  However, an initial phase is starting soon at UCLA:


Although details for the program are still being sorted out, the UCPath Project will essentially create a more simplified process for paying university employees than in the past.Proposed changes to the current system include standardized pay cycles among all 10 campuses. For example, all academic employees and postdoctoral scholars within the UC will be paid bimonthly. Temporary employees and health systems staff will be paid biweekly. Right now, UCLA departments follow different timetables for awarding payrolls, said Allison Baird-James, associate vice chancellor and controller.The first phase of the project will be implemented at UCLA and several other campuses in 2013 and will slowly integrate into the rest of the UC system over a period of three years. In addition, UCLA employees will see a streamlined biweekly payroll schedule in the coming months.

Full story at http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2012/01/ucwide_payroll_system_to_be_implemented

Yours truly has some indications from those in the pit who are dealing with the transition that maybe all the hiccups have not been worked out.  Those living paycheck to paycheck might want to put a little cash aside just in case pay is delayed.

Washington Dysfunction to be Reflected in Your Paycheck

Excerpt from an email circulated at Anderson – in case youdid not get one similar:

This notice is in regards to the Social Security (OASDI) taxdeducted from the January 3, 2012 paychecks.

In 2010, President Obama signed into law the Tax ReliefUnemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010.  Included in the Act was a provision thatreduced the Social Security withholding rate from 6.2% to 4.2% for 2011.  This change was effective with wages paid onor after January 1, 2011 and included an expiration date of December 31,2011.   In order to comply with theexpiration date of December 31, 2011 and to insure that December earnings werepaid in a timely manner, the Social Security tax rate was changed back to 6.2%in time for the pay compute of the January 3, 2012 paychecks.

On December 23, 2011, President Obama signed the TemporaryPayroll Tax Cut Continuation Act of 2011 to extend the 2% reduction in SocialSecurity (OASDI) tax withholding on wages paid after January 1, 2012.  Since this change was not enacted in time toaffect the 1/3/2012 pay checks, monthly employees paid on January 3, 2012 weresubject to Social Security withholding tax at the old rate (6.2%).  A refund for the difference has been automaticallyprocessed and will be reflected on the February 1, 2012 paychecks.

Do You Have an Opinion on APM 0668 - Negotiated Salary Program?

To: UCLA Senate Faculty

From: the UCLA Faculty Association

Date: Oct. 26, 2011

Subject: UCLA FA Bulletin on APM 0668 – the proposed Negotiated Salary Program

In times like these—budget cuts to higher education statewide and to UC year after year—it is good to know about the Faculty Association (FA) at UCLA, an independent organization of faculty on this campus since 1973. Its focus is singular: the general welfare of UCLA Senate faculty on the general campus and health sciences. Because it is state funded, the Academic Senate cannot use its resources to speak out on political issues. It is tasked with "joint governance," which means the Senate is inherently in a relationship with the administration.

It is the independence of the FA, which is dues-supported, that enables this organization to speak out on issues of interest to faculty. On some of those issues we ally with faculty associations on other UC campuses or with other groups, and sometimes with the University if it can benefit from our independent voice. But these alliances are made only on an ad hoc basis because the UCLA FA preserves the independence that has always characterized this organization on this campus, statewide, and in Sacramento.

Historically, the FA concentrates on issues that affect the workplace—mainly salaries and benefits—leaving academic matters to the Senate. In this context, the FA is now focusing on the new personnel section APM 0668, called the Negotiated Salary Program (NSP). The campuses have been asked to comment on this proposed policy by Oct 28, and the systemwide comments must be in by Nov. 18, 2011. To see the new policy and read something about its background, go to http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/senate/underreview/APM-668SystemwideReviewRequestandmaterials.pdf

Post your short comments on this blogsite! If your comments more space that the blogsite comments allow, email your longer comments to the FA (ucfa@earthlink.net), and we will distribute them by email.

If you are not already a member of the UCLA FA, the Executive Board asks you to join your colleagues in supporting this organization, which has been acting on behalf of faculty interests for more than 35 years. More information on the history and mission of the UCLA FA is on the website at www.uclafaculty.org. Click “Join” at the top for an application.

The 2010-11 UCLA FA Executive Board

Dwight Read, Chair

Sheila Greibach, Treasurer Computer Sci.,

Michael Allen, English Department

Ian Coulter, Dentistry and Public Health

Jody Kreiman, Surgery

Steve Lippman, Management

Michael Lofchie, Political Science

John Merriam, Molecular Cell Development Bio

Daniel Mitchell, Management and Public Affairs, FA Blogsite Manager

Karen Orren, Political Science

Malina Stefanovska, French and Francophone Studies

Steve Cederbaum, Emeritus Representative

***

FA Bulletin: APM 0668

This new policy would not have surfaced in the old days when California was building one of the greatest educational systems in the world and funding the University of California to become the premier public university. The step/ladder salary plan functioned as an equitable way to reward merit and excellence. But times have changed. Off-scale has been used to supplement salaries of most faculty, while the step/ladder rates have been stuck in place for many years. UC has now been forced to look for alternate funding for faculty salary increases and more liberal policies to maintain its excellence.

The new APM 0668 would allow faculty outside the School of Medicine, which has already a similar program in place, to apply to department chairs or other administrators to use some portion of non-state resources to supplement their salaries for a specific period of time, typically one to two years. The NSP must comply with all federal and state regulations, limitations, and exclusions, regarding the use of grant funds for salary augmentation and any gift or endowment memoranda of understanding about the use of funding.

This negotiated salary supplement for faculty (“y”) would be in addition to base salary (step/scale + off-scale or “x”). The “y” would not be covered by UCRP (the basic UC pension plan) because it would not be a permanent part of the salary; instead, the “y” would be a temporary faculty salary supplement that could be renewed for one to two years, based on the annual or two-year review process regardless of whether the faculty member obtains new or retains previously awarded non-state funding. APM 0668 could be seen as a salary augmentation scheme, parallel to off-scale, but less permanent.

Also, APM 0668 is not a salary exchange program; UC is not replacing its funding with non-state funding. UC is allowing some faculty to supplement their salaries for a limited and specific period of time based on the availability of non-state funds.

The new Negotiated Salary Program (NSP) allows three kinds of funding to supplement faculty salaries: gifts and endowments, professional fees and fees in self-supporting programs, and research grants that allow some part of the total grant to be allocated to salaries. Although APM 0668 may affect very few faculty, it is possible that the greatest number will be those who receive multiple research grants.

NSP has its supporters and detractors. Those in favor say that the policy would allow UC to supplement the salaries of faculty on the general campus in ways similar to those that have been used in the health sciences compensation plan and to do so in the new environment of reduced state funding. The NSP would also help the University recruit new faculty and retain those with competing offers by using extramural funding to sweeten offers. Those opposed to the NSP bring up the costs associated with research grants, some of which may not be fully covered by the indirect cost rate paid to the University on both federal and nonfederal grants. The NSP could also result in even greater salary inequities among faculty at the same step on the ladder that arise from further emphasis on competition and market value.

The UCLA Faculty Association has three areas of concern about the new policy. The first two have to do with the basic assumptions behind the APM 0668, rather than what is stated in the policy itself, and the third has to do with historical methods of setting salary increases for UC faculty.

The first area concerns “the contingency fee,” (668-10, a, 4: “Management of the contingency fund that supports the Program.” Some have speculated that this is actually a tax to divert revenue from one source to support other units with less access to external funding. While equalizing funding is an issue, nothing will short-circuit the NSP faster than the idea of a tax; therefore, it is important that the NSP language specifically spell out what use will be made of the contingency fund.

One such use of the contingency fee would be insurance for the limited time that the NSP has been awarded. For instance, if some faculty get negotiated salary supplements, and in the second year, for example, the funding is cut or stopped, there must be some sort of “contingency fund” or “self-insurance fund” to cover salary supplements that have been negotiated for a specific time period for which the funding is no longer adequate. Illness of the faculty member could also require insurance. The suggested fee is now set at 3% of the faculty member’s base salary (scale/step + off-scale). Thus a faculty member with a base salary of $100,000 would need the grant to pay a contingency fee of $3,000 to UC in case of an unforeseen drop in grant funding.

Why isn’t the contingency fund based on the amount of the negotiated salary supplement rather than the entire base salary, which would not be affected by any reduction in grant funding? If the fee were based on the amount of the salary supplement, the percentage of the contingency fee might differ significantly from 3%. For example, if the negotiated salary supplement were $15,000, then NSP might require as much as 10% of that amount or $1,500 put aside as insurance in case the $13,500 ($15,000 - $1,500) from the grant were to be unavailable during the duration of the grant. This example shows why it is essential to spell out what use will be made of the contingency fund in order to set the rate in a fair and transparent manner. The contingency fund is not a long-term insurance policy to make the NSP a permanent salary increase for any faculty; it is a short-term policy designed for emergencies.

Second, the NSP assumes that no faculty member would be permitted to negotiate a salary increase of more than 25% of base salary, established on an annual basis. If a grant allows more to be charged to salary, why would the University set a limit of 25%? Given this limited time period of the agreement of 1 to 2 years, to assume a 25% limit appears to question the policy before it is even implemented. If limits on the NSP are adopted on all grants, even those for which there are no limits on the amount that can be allocated to salary within the grant itself, then language should be added to explain the rationale for the limit. If the 25% limit has been set to limit possible abuse of the NSP, then the policy itself should be clarified to avoid abuse.

Third, the FA is concerned about whether the negotiated salary supplements would be included in the salary totals for all UC faculty for the purpose of comparing the average UC salaries with those of the Comparison-8 Institutions. This question raises another: do UC’s peer institutions follow a policy similar to NSP and include these kinds of supplements in the salaries they report to UC? If the supplements were included in UC salaries, it would raise the average, which would, in turn, call for a lower salary increase for UC faculty to achieve parity with its peers.

The UCLA FA was invited, among other interested parties, to submit comments on the APM 0668 proposal. This blog post represents discussion of the FA Board at a recent meeting. The FA is more than the Board, of course, so the blog is posted to give all faculty the opportunity to join in the discussion and make their input available.

The UCLA FA welcomes all responses.

Attention to Pay

There is a proposal for a new negotiated pay system for faculty. Yours truly suggests you pay close attention since it is your pay that is involved. The cover letter indicates that employees (presumably faculty) should be consulted. The proposal is at: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/senate/underreview/APM-668SystemwideReviewRequestandmaterials.pdf

UC Compensation Data Report for 2010

UC has released its annual compensation report for 2010. Below are some highlights:

*Approximately 40% of compensation in 2010 went to academic employees, primarily to faculty and researchers. The remaining 60% went to non-academic employees, including those who support academic departments, student services, patient care and other university functions. As in previous years, the “top 10 earning” employees at UC in 2010, based on total pay, were health sciences faculty members – typically world-renowned specialists in their fields – and athletic coaches.

• Market positions have eroded and are expected to worsen due to lack of salary increases, rising employee medical benefit premiums, the resumption of employee contributions to the UC retirement plan, and a systemwide 12-month furlough program which reduced faculty and staff pay beginning in September 2009 and continuing through August 2010.

• On average, cash compensation for UC faculty is 10 percent below market, and total compensation (cash plus benefits) is 4 percent behind comparable institutions. More recent data show a 12.8 percent salary lag for faculty.

• Union-represented service workers are closer to the market average than all other categories of employees in the UC system, and their total compensation (cash plus benefits) is 18 percent higher than their counterparts at other institutions.

• The largest compensation gap effects [sic Shame! Shame!] senior management group members (e.g., the president, chancellors, deans, vice presidents, chief financial officers) whose cash compensation, on average, was 22 percent lower than their counterparts. Total compensation, including non-cash items such as health, pension and retirement benefits, was 14 percent below their counterparts at comparable institutions.

• Cash compensation for managers, senior professionals, professionals and support staff – both union-represented and non-represented – lags behind their counterparts, with the lag ranging from 13 percent to 19 percent on average.

• Cash compensation for most UC medical center employees is near or slightly above market, except for staff physicians whose pay is 18 percent below market.

• Consistent with healthcare industry practices, UC medical centers use performance-based (incentive) compensation programs to encourage and reward employees of every level for quality patient care and operational efficiency. UC medical centers are self-supporting enterprises and their operating expenses, including employee compensation, are paid from operating revenues – no state funds are used.

Source of the above highlights: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/compensation/payroll2010/employee_pay_summary_cy2010.pdf

Note: Despite the 40% number cited above for “academic employees,” only about one-eighth of payroll from all sources goes to “ladder and acting ranks.”

Source: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/compensation/payroll2010/table1-compensation-by-occupational-group-2010payroll.pdf

These and other references on pay in 2010 and before are at http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/compensation/payroll2010/

Don’t spend it all right away:

UPDATE: It took awhile for the news reports to catch up with this report but here is an item: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/27/MN1E1KS04Q.DTL

Golden Silence?

Our colleagues at CSU and the community colleges feel the need to be outspoken about the impact of state budget cuts and possible upcoming “trigger” cuts to higher ed. Somehow, UC is not being quoted in the various news articles about this recent trend in public complaints. Is UC’s silence golden? Contrary to the headline on yesterday's post on this blog, maybe more needs to be said.

Example 1:

Outgoing SF State President Slams Governor: Brown "doesn’t seem to appreciate high-quality education in California”

Story at http://www.baycitizen.org/education/story/outgoing-sf-state-president-slams/

Example 2:

California is witnessing a slow and steady decline of its prized systems of higher education specifically because legislative Republicans have blocked efforts to raise taxes to pay for them, the community college and state university chancellors said Monday in a blunt and sobering back-to-school message.

Story at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/22/MNH11KPC7C.DTL

Meanwhile, local editorial writers need some education of their own. They continue the notion that the less the state decides to pay UC, the more say it should have. Here is an example (excerpt):

The University of California's latest move offers a teachable moment about cognitive dissonance: The university plans to hand out pay raises to faculty and other staff, even as UC officials hike tuition and bemoan state funding cuts. UC should jettison the raises and focus on controlling costs instead of boosting expenses. UC President Mark Yudof announced last week that the university would offer merit pay hikes -- generally worth 3 percent of pay -- to faculty and nonunion staff earning less than $200,000 a year. Newly hired or promoted employees, along with those earning more than $200,000 a year, would not be eligible for the additional pay.

But UC administrators apparently need a remedial course in public relations. The university could take few steps more likely to stir public anger than announcing pay raises on the heels of budget cuts and student fee hikes. Undermining public good will is a bizarre approach for a university that depends on public support…

Full editorial at http://www.pe.com/localnews/opinion/editorials/stories/PE_OpEd_Opinion_D_op_22_ed_ucraises.386b723.html

“…depends on public support” UC budget $20 billion. State support $2.5 billion. Repeat: UC budget $20 billion. State support $2.5 billion.

Silence isn’t golden for UC as long as the $20-$2.5 message is not being endlessly repeated. Otherwise, folks will think we have nothing to say:

UC opts out of controller’s public pay database (and shouldn't)

Below is a news article and a comment by yours truly that follows the article:

UC opts out of controller’s public pay database (excerpt)

8/18/11, San Diego Union-Tribune

Hundreds of government agencies across the state, from the Vista Irrigation District to the Governor’s Office, have provided state Controller John Chiang with detailed salary and benefit information on public employees. Not the University of California… The UC system is the only state agency that has not complied. UC officials said they already maintain a listing of employee salaries, with formulas to estimate the cost of other benefits. The complete database of UC employees’ pay is available at UCSD’s Geisel Library or upon request.

The controller’s database, by contrast, is available on the Internet. It enumerates the actual dollar amount of the employees’ medical, dental and vision benefits, the amount the employer contributed for pensions and the total compensation — including allowances and stipends not included in base pay.

To provide that level of detail would be too expensive, said Dianne Klein, spokeswoman for UC President Mark Yudof. The 10-campus system is trying to cover a $650 million cut in state funding, and said this week it plans merit raises for employees who make less than $200,000…

Full article at http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/aug/18/uc-opts-out-controllers-public-pay-database/

Editorial note from yours truly: This is a more complicated issue than it might seem. First, yours truly has long opposed such listings BY EMPLOYEE NAME because of privacy issues and the danger of ID theft.

When I have challenged those newspapers that maintain pay databases by name to publish their own employee payrolls by name, I get the usual claptrap back. But, of course, they don't publish their payrolls by name for obvious reasons.

Second, however, is the fact that the controller, unlike the newspapers, does not publish by name. He publishes by job title. That is very different. There are typically many employees under a single job title. Given the imperfect world, we should encourage the job title approach and not get into a fight with the controller.

CSU is in the controller’s database since he issues paychecks for that system. You can find CSU salaries at http://lgcr.sco.ca.gov/CompensationDetail.aspx?entity=Education&id=0&load=ByDefault&year=2010

However, if you click on the link above, you will see that only job titles appear. For example, the first salary listed there is an “Accompanist I (Range 1)” at Cal State Fresno. But there is no individual name.

And, by the way, the state controller might someday run for, and be, governor. (No one has ever had his/her life ambition to be just state controller.) A word to the wise: It's nice to have friends in high places.

Update: The Sacramento Bee version of this story is at http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/08/university-of-california-john-chiang-pay-data.html The Bee is one of the newspapers that carries pay info by name.

Yudof Announces Merit Pay Increase Plan

President Yudof has issued a letter today indicating there will be merit-based pay raises for faculty "at all levels" of 3% and non-represented (nonunion) staff earning up to $200,000. It is unclear exactly what this means for faculty (who get step and promotion advances).



The letter is at http://www.scribd.com/doc/62519367/Pres-Yudof-Letter-081711



A Sacramento Bee description of the letter and some background is at http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/08/university-of-california-employees-may-get-raises-mark-yudof.html



Clearly, a golden future awaits:





Update: There is a LA Times version of this story at http://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-uc-pay-20110818,0,298613.story

But it does not make the matter any clearer.



Update: The San Francisco Chronicle version tends to put a negative spin on the announcement but contains the statement:



... all faculty and eligible staff will get a raise - generally about 3 percent of their base salary - if they receive a positive performance evaluation this fall.



Of course, not all faculty normally receive merit reviews in a given year. So this statement may mean that what we have here is a 3% across-the-board (or almost-across-the-board) range adjustment.

Full story at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/17/BAH11KON2P.DTL

Yours truly has now received additional info: Faculty who have received a satisfactory performance (merit) review in the past 4 years will get the 3% as of October 1, 2011.

Regents to Be Asked to Leave Pay Increases to the President

There will be other items on the agenda of the upcoming Regents meeting (July 12-14) apart from the budget-related tuition increase discussed in early blog posts. For example, the Regents are asked to delegate certain authority over pay increases to the UC president:

Regents Policy 7203, adopted in November 2005 and subsequently amended in July 2010, established the goal of obtaining, prioritizing, and directing funds, to the extent such funds were available, to increase salaries to achieve market comparability for all groups of employees over a ten year period. Upon adoption, the policy included language requiring annual approval by the Regents of campus and Office of the President allocations for this purpose. Approval of campus allocations is inconsistent with both past practice and the President’s role as steward of the operational and transactional aspects of the University operating under the direction of the Regents. Determining allocations for each campus is a responsibility that more appropriately rests with the President as a means of implementing the policy goals established by the Regents.

Therefore, the Regents are requested to amend the policy to rescind the requirement that the Regents approve campus and Officehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif of the President allocations of salary funds. All other aspects of Regents Policy 7203 remain unchanged.

Full report at http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/regmeet/jul11/c3.pdf

And who would know better?


PS: Although there are no surprises given previous statements from UC, the report on the tuition increase is at http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/regmeet/jul11/f10.pdf