Public Funds Spent on UCSB Chancellor Home

Chancellor Robert A. Huttenback of the University of California, Santa Barbara, has spent more than $120,000 of university funds for household improvements and expenses and has repeatedly used university personnel to perform maintenance and repair work on his home, The Times has learned.

An undetermined but substantial amount of additional work on the house was billed on university work orders to another building, according to employees in the facilities management department. There is no evidence that Huttenback ordered this done, however, and he denied in an interview that there has been any attempt to conceal the expenditures.

Since Huttenback moved to the off-campus home in 1979, university personnel have continually repaired and upgraded the property, according to facilities management employees. But much of the work was charged to the chancellor’s on-campus house, which is uninhabited.

The work performed on Huttenback’s home was often billed to an account designed for miscellaneous items, including “repairs and work required at the university house,” and “support work at the chancellor’s residence for function areas.” Although the chancellor often entertained university guests and prospective donors at his home, facilities management personnel said much of the work charged to the miscellaneous account had nothing to do with university business.

Hard to Determine Cost

“Nobody will ever know how much money was spent on their house,” said one long-time facilities management employee. “Not counting materials, you’d have to go through the time cards of dozens of employees for eight years. Some of these electricians and plumbers get $20 an hour.

The largest single expenditure on Huttenback’s home was $40,595 paid to a contractor to renovate the kitchen, said a university source with access to financial records. Additional work was done on the kitchen after the initial bill was submitted, the source added.

The embattled chancellor is now the subject of an audit by the University of California to determine whether university funds were improperly used for household purposes. A UC system source in Berkeley, who asked for anonymity because the audit is continuing, said the results are expected to show that the chancellor spent more than $120,000--which includes the kitchen--in university funds on his home. That figure does not include any of the work performed on Huttenback’s residence that was charged to the on-campus home.

Huttenback acknowledged in an interview Friday that the figure “might be around $100,000 over a long period of time,” but said he previously had thought that the expenditures were justified because he often used his home for university purposes.

“We built essentially a catering kitchen that was often used for university functions,” he said. “Hindsight is always 20-20. I thought I was doing the appropriate thing at the time.”

House Useful in Fund Raising

In defense of the expenditures, Huttenback said the house has contributed to his successful fund-raising efforts on the university’s behalf. During his first year as chancellor, private donations to the campus totaled about $1.4 million. This school year the total is already more than $9 million.

“We raised more than $30 million since I’ve been here,” he said, “and many of those people who gave money were entertained at the house.”

Huttenback said he knew nothing about time and labor being charged to other accounts.

“We’ve been remarkably open and we’ve hid nothing,” he said. “There’s been no malfeasance, no attempt to deceive.”

Joe Pastrone, an associate vice president in the UC system in Berkeley, who investigated the expenditures on Huttenback’s home before the audit was conducted, said, “If there are any indications that records are incorrectly filled out, the auditors will pursue the matter.”

After Pastrone began a preliminary investigation last month involving the expenditures, and he notified Huttenback that some expenses “didn’t follow procedures,” the chancellor called for a full audit. Huttenback also volunteered to repay the university because some of the money spent on his house, he acknowledged, is his “own responsibility.”

According to some facilities management employees, campus maintenance suffered because the staff had to contend with jobs at Huttenback’s home. The chancellor’s house, employees said, had priority over campus buildings.

“Many times I was about to do certain jobs on campus, like build a cabinet for an office, and then Mrs. (Freda) Huttenback would call for some work on her house and I’d have to delay the campus jobs,” said Walt Anderson, a foreman in the university carpentry shop who retired nine months ago.

Request Anonymity

Several facilities management employees, who requested anonymity because they said they fear for their jobs, said the auditor will not be able to find much of the material and labor spent on Huttenback’s home because the majority of the work over the past eight years was charged to the other building.

Because he lives off-campus, Huttenback receives a $37,000-a-year housing allowance, and he also receives a standard chancellor’s stipend of $21,000 annually for entertainment and operating costs.

When Huttenback arrived at UC Santa Barbara in 1978, he moved into the campus chancellor’s residence, a three-bedroom home with a study and a view of a lagoon. His wife demanded a number of major renovations, and then about a year later they decided that the residence was not suitable and purchased a house in Santa Barbara.

Although Huttenback’s predecessor, Vernon Cheadle, had lived in the on-campus house with his family for 13 years, UC officials agreed that it was set in an extremely noisy area and was not suitable for family living.

Before the Huttenbacks moved, however, more than $100,000 of university funds were authorized to renovate the campus home, said Thore Edgren, a former principal architect for the campus. He said the major expenditures included silk drapes for about $8,000, new furniture and refinishing of existing furniture for about $17,000, and acoustical glass for about $20,000.

Extensive Work

After the Huttenbacks moved to the off-campus home, workers visited the house frequently, sometimes on a weekly basis, university employees said. According to Anderson, the retired carpentry foreman, university personnel worked on the house extensively soon after the move and charged the cost to the on-campus residence.

“That place was worked on from stem to stern,” he said. “Work was done in all areas of the house. I made out a lot of requisitions and my carpenters spent a lot of time there.”

According to one facilities management supervisor, university plumbers and electricians have done repairs on the Huttenbacks’ house, and university employees have cleaned carpets and drapes, changed locks, framed windows, stained and varnished woodwork and installed two air conditioners. And university gardeners, the supervisor said, installed a sprinkler system in the Huttenbacks’ yard and have done extensive landscaping and yard work.

Employees said they were told by their supervisors to refer to the chancellor’s home as the “north campus,” when dispatching university workers by radio to service the home.

A facilities management employee said that a university painter recently was at the house for an entire month. On another occasion, when the house had been flooded after a heavy rain, several university workers spent more than a week cleaning up, a second employee said.

‘No Major Stuff’ Done

Huttenback, when asked about the extent of campus employees’ work on the house, said: “When we had a big party we got some help. . . . There was some dry rot in the kitchen and some painting in the hall, but no major stuff was done. Whatever was done the auditor has got.”

Some faculty members have criticized the Huttenbacks for extravagance. And as a result of the financial questions being investigated by the UC system and other issues, a group of faculty leaders and student body officers recently suggested that Huttenback resign.

But despite the discontent of some faculty and staff, Huttenback, because of his accomplishments, is not without supporters in the university community. In addition to the great increase in donations to the university, Huttenback has lured nationally respected faculty members and prestigious programs.

Under Huttenback’s tenure, UC Santa Barbara has established a center for robotics and microelectronics, a $14-million program funded by the National Science Foundation. More than 100 universities sought such centers and only six were given funds. He also helped attract the Institute for Theoretical Physics, one of the top physics research centers in the nation.

During Huttenback’s eight years as chancellor, UC Santa Barbara has hired a Nobel laureate, and faculty who are members of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering have increased by about 10.