Finally: Accountability For CSU's Lavish Administrators' Salaries And Oppressive Tuition Hikes: Bd. of Trustees President's Reconfirmation Is Stopped By Repub Who Speaks Dem Words

Yesterday (Feb 27), the state Senate declined to take up the re-confirmation of CSU Board of Trustees president Herbert Carter -- which requires 2/3 voted approval -- and he is on his way out. State Senate President Darrel Steinberg was afraid of an embarrasing public debate after Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff (R, Diamond Bar) issued the following statement on Feb. 16:

On July 12, 2011, Governor Jerry Brown wrote to Herbert Carter, the Chairman of the CSU Board of Trustees regarding administrative pay packages. In that letter, the governor stated:

"It is in this context, and prompted by the salary decision you are about to make today, that I write to express my concern about the ever-escalating pay packages awarded to your top administrators."

The governor also wrote:

"I fear your approach to compensation is setting a pattern for public service that we cannot afford."

The governor closed his letter with the following request:

"These are difficult times and difficult choices must be made. I ask that you rethink the criteria for setting administrators’ salaries."

Members of the Senate Republican Caucus shared the governor’s concerns regarding administrative pay packages. The governor’s concerns and his specific request were not addressed.

On the same day that the CSU Board of Trustees voted to increase administrators’ salaries, they also voted to increase student fees.

I cannot recommend that Trustee Carter’s nomination be confirmed by the Senate until such time as Californians see real evidence that the CSU Trustees are making the tough decisions needed to control escalating costs that are being passed onto students and their families.

Senator Huff was right-on in quoting the words of the state's top elected Democrat in making those points. This shouldn't have been a partisan issue but it was. Too many Sac'to Dem legislators are badly out of touch on this issue.

Consider what Sacramento lawmakers did when CSU Trustees' votesd last year to approve an exhorbitant salary for an incoming CSU campus president while simultaneously approving another oppressive tuition increase. State Sen. Ted Lieu (one of the more reasoned voices in Sac'to) introduced a too-modest bill that, despite a salary cap, enables salaries for CSU campus presidents that in many cases are roughly twice as high as that paid to the Governor.

We're sorry, but in our opinion an educrat exec who oversees a publicly owned college campus doesn't deserve more money than the chief executive for the entire state of California.

It's time to bring administrators' salaries at CA's public universities -- CSU and UC -- into line with what the public faces daily: recession, layoffs and worse. If the two systems' current administrators can't deliver budgets that maintain basic core college services without unsustainable fee and tuition increases, they should go...and if there are CSU Trustees or UC Regents who defend the status quo, they ought to clear out their desks too.