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The administration of the University of California system pays top workers salaries significantly higher than the pay of similar state employees, has provided millions of dollars in benefits not typical to the public sector and failed to disclose to the Board of Regents and the public that it had $175 million in budget reserve funds, a state audit found Tuesday, reports the Los Angeles Times.
According to the report, the audit of the Office of the President also found that it failed to satisfactorily justify its spending on system-wide initiatives and “inappropriately” screened surveys submitted by auditors to campus officials.
“Our report concludes that the Office of the President has amassed substantial reserve funds, used misleading budgeting practices, provided its employees with generous salaries and atypical benefits, and failed to satisfactorily justify its spending on system wide initiatives,” State Auditor Elaine Howle wrote to Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature.
“Furthermore, when we sought independent perspective from campuses about the quality and cost of the services and programs the Office of the President provides to them, the Office of the President intentionally interfered with our audit process,” Howle wrote, according to the LA Times.
The audit had been requested by legislators who had grown concerned over high tuition costs and complaints of a bloated administration overseeing the UC system’s 10 campuses, said the LA Times.
The LA Times mentions that UC President Janet Napolitano agreed with the vast majority of recommendations for improving budget processes and spending, but denied that $175 million was hidden from the UC Board of Regents.
Napolitano said in a letter to Howle, “The recommendations to [the UC Office of the President] are helpful. We welcome this constructive input, which aligns with our proactive efforts to continually improve UCOP’s operations, and UCOP intends to implement the recommendations.”
There were two Board of Regents Chairs, Monica Lozano and Charlene Zettel, however, who asked Howle to remove recommendations that they feel encroach on the constitutional autonomy of the university system, including proposals to have the Legislature approve the Office of the President’s budget and to appoint a third party to oversee operations, said the LA Times.
“As written, we believe these recommendations threaten the University’s standing as a constitutionally autonomous entity, and the Board of Regents itself,” the regents wrote.
The LA Times explained that the salaries for the administrative amounted to $2.5 million more than the maximum annual salary ranges for comparable state employees, auditors found.
The report gave the following examples:
Accounting manager’s maximum annual salary is $169,000 at UC compared to $156,000 for other state employees.
An information system manager can make $258,000 with UC, but $150,000 with other state agencies.
According to the LA Times, the audit said that “10 executives in the Office of the President whose compensation we analyzed were paid a total of $3.7 million in fiscal year 2014-15 — over $700,000 more than the combined salaries of their highest paid state employee counterparts.”
The audit continued on to mention that the the Office of the President has not managed its own budget “in a fiscally prudent or transparent way.”
Napolitano said the audit was in error in claiming her office failed to publicly disclose tens of millions in surplus funds, said the LA Times.
“In fact, UCOP’s budget and financial approaches reflect strategic, deliberate and transparent spending and investment in UC and state priorities,” she wrote.
But Howle disagree, “Significant reforms are necessary to strengthen the public’s trust in the Office of the President,” the audit concluded, according to the LA Times.
You can read the UCOP’s official response to the audit here.
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