Open the Door and Let the Sunlight In

Ordinary people just can’t understand it. When they retire, they get either a pension or a lump sum. But David P. Gardner seems to be getting both a pension and a lump sum as he retires from the presidency of the University of California: $126,000 annually starting as early as next year, plus an extra $857,000.

Students, whose fees are skyrocketing, are outraged: “You have added the university to the list of the institutions that people have lost their faith in,” Marisela Marquez, president of the UC Students’ Assn., told the UC Board of Regents at a public meeting Monday.

Taxpayers who do understand that Gardner’s retirement package is based on his salary and deferred compensation may nonetheless recall that his annual compensation ($307,900) is 30% higher than that of a nationwide comparison group of university presidents, including presidents of large university systems.

If Gardner’s retirement package had been fully presented to the taxpayers years ago when it was first approved, opposition to it now might be smaller. Unfortunately, when discussing employee compensation, the regents are, by statute, exempt from the Open Meetings Act that governs other state bodies in such discussions. Only by knowing just what to ask for have university watchers learned about the compensation approved for incoming UC President Jack W. Peltason. Jeremiah Hallisey, the regent who drew public attention to Gardner’s retirement package, says that Peltason’s package, “with all benefits included, is about $500,000 a year.” He doubts that such a high salary is necessary for recruitment: “I think we could hire a quality president for about $250,000 or just half that.”

Rather than face late-erupting compensation scandals, the university could, of course, meet honest questioners halfway. But according to the leaked transcript of a closed regents’ meeting, Ronald W. Brady, UC senior vice president for administration, argued against full disclosure: “I think we’ll find that (the press, the Legislature and the public) don’t understand it and they won’t know what questions to ask, and I don’t know that we have an obligation to help them ask the questions either.”

Gov. Pete Wilson has called the regents’ confirmation of Gardner’s retirement deal “certainly a moral obligation and arguably a legal obligation as well.” It may well be just that, but such obligations should be assumed in public view--for university employees as they now are for other state employees.

Legislation has been introduced in Sacramento to extend the Open Meetings Act to regents’ meetings on UC compensation. We urge action and meanwhile exhort the leadership of the university to a new and fuller candor with the California public.