Favors Include Posh Club Membership
John Miltner, UCI’s vice chancellor for university advancement, has use of a membership in the exclusive Big Canyon Country Club--for which there is a lengthy waiting list--courtesy of the Irvine Co.
According to company President Thomas H. Nielsen, the firm assigned one of the social (non-golfing) memberships held in its name to Miltner, “in his role as vice chancellor of the university.” A club member said such a membership would be worth about $20,000
Miltner’s Big Canyon membership was solicited by university officials through UCI’s Board of Overseers, of which Donald Bren, Irvine Co. chairman, and Donald Koll, a prominent Irvine developer, are members.
Koll and other members of the Board of Overseers also arranged for Miltner’s membership at the private Pacific Club and Balboa Bay Club.
The Board of Overseers has since become the executive committee of the UCI Foundation, a nonprofit corporation. Miltner and another member of the university advancement staff drive vehicles or receive vehicle subsidies from the UCI Foundation.
According to Miltner, the Big Canyon membership was never formally acknowledged as a gift-in-kind to the university. He said he viewed the assignment as “a gesture of good will on their (the Irvine Co.’s) part to get us into the community” and “never part of any transaction.” The university pays the monthly dues and Miltner said he reimburses the university for any personal use of the facility.
In an interview at the company’s Fashion Island headquarters, Nielsen said the membership is much like his own, and that of other corporate officers, and involved no expectation of return. No tax benefit was taken by the company for the assignment, Nielsen said, adding that if the membership became “a substantial concern we can sit down with them (university officials)” to reconsider its propriety.
“We’re allowing him to use our membership,” added Gary Hunt, Irvine Co. vice president and longtime aide to Bren, who sat in on the interview. “We have the ability to withdraw it.”
