Prepared on behalf of the DFA Board by Joe Kiskis and Eric Hays.
Topics:
State Budget negotiations: UCOP budget may be separated from the rest of UC funding
UCOP independent investigator selected
Regents appointments
What’s the Problem at UC? by Dan Mitchell
STATE BUDGET NEGOTIATIONS: UCOP BUDGET MAY BE SEPARATED FROM THE REST OF UC FUNDING
The state budget should be finalized next week. We are hearing that state funding of UCOP may be separated from the rest of UC’s budget, as suggested by the recent State Auditor’s report. See this Sacramento Bee article.
UCOP INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATOR SELECTED
You will likely recall that in the State audit of UCOP, UCOP was accused of inappropriate interference with campus survey responses. This was a fairly serious charge. It was previously reported that the Regents decided to hire an independent investigator to determine the facts of the incident. Regents Chair Lozano has now announced the selection.
“The University of California Board of Regents has retained former California Supreme Court Justice Carlos R. Moreno and the law firm of Hueston Hennigan LLP, to conduct a fact-finding review of actions undertaken by the Office of the President with respect to surveys the California state auditor sent to UC campuses as part of the recent audit of the Office of the President.”
REGENTS APPOINTMENTS
Governor Brown has nominated four new people to serve as UC Regents. Official announcement:
Maria Anguiano is currently a financial officer at the Minerva Project Inc., a rather unconventional, for profit, undergraduate educational institution. She has previously worked at UCOP and UC Riverside. Because of her role in the pilot of Activity Based Costing (ABC) at UCR, she is a controversial nominee. The Governor has been a strong promoter of this pilot at UCR and the smaller associated ABC pilot at UC Davis.
Howard “Peter” Guber has had a career in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. He is currently chairman and chief executive officer at Mandalay Entertainment Group and co-owner of professional sports teams including the Golden State Warriors.
Lark Park is Governor Brown’s senior advisor for policy. She has had numerous positions in California state government.
Ellen Tauscher is a strategic advisor at Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell and Berkowitz, which is a large law firm and lobbying group. It was founded by James F. Baker whose son was a US Representative and whose grandson was Howard Baker, Jr., who was US Senate Majority Leaderand Chief of Staff for President Ronald Reagan. She is also chair of the Governor’s Military Council. If you’re like me, you didn’t even know that the Governor had a military council. See http://militarycouncil.ca.gov. She has also been undersecretary of state for arms control and a Representative in Congress for California’s 10th District, which includes Modesto.
Thus Governor Brown continues his quest to reshape the University. Starting in 2014, Brown has made six appointments to the board that do not follow the tradition of selecting most Regents from the upper layers of California business. In this group, only Guber is a person I would call a traditional choice. The positive side of this is that it has brought a welcome diversity of background and perspective to the board. This is evident in discussions at Regents meetings. The downside is that not much has been done to add people with strong experience in and orientation to the academic core of higher education. Also some of these appointments are perhaps a bit too closely associated with Brown and some of his favorite projects, e.g. Anguiano and Park in this group.
Regents nominees must be confirmed by the State Senate within one year of their nomination. In the meantime, they can serve on the board. Before the Senate floor vote, the Senate Rules Committee holds a hearing on the nominees.
WHAT’S THE PROBLEM AT UC? BY DAN MITCHELL
Dan Mitchell, who is Professor Emeritus at UCLA in the Anderson School of Management and the School of Public Affairs, has a nice article that adds historical context to the issues above and others we currently face at the University.