Proposition 61 Could Wreck State Education, UC Officials Fear

Although the election is almost a month away, Susan Taylor, director of governmental affairs at UC San Diego, said that out-of-state universities have been sending out feelers to UCSD professors whose salaries could be affected by passage of Proposition 61.

“I’ve heard about some prestigious universities in the East who have advised our professors that they would be interested in talking to them if Proposition 61 passes,” said Taylor.

To be sure, the faculty pickings would be ripe and plentiful at UCSD, particularly at the prestigious school of medicine and graduate department of biology, where the staffs have received international acclaim. But in addition to possible faculty raiding by other schools, UCSD officials say that the controversial measure is also making it difficult to recruit superbly qualified candidates to fill the vacant dean’s position at the school of medicine.

Taylor and many of the University of California officials who oppose the initiative say that the University of California’s competitive edge in research, science and computer technology will be jeopardized if the initiative is approved by voters in November.

If the proposition passes and a ceiling is placed on salaries paid to state employees, the UC system will no longer be able to recruit the scholars and Nobel Prize winners who have contributed to the university’s tradition of academic excellence, the critics say.

The fate of Proposition 61 is yet to be decided, but the measure has already had a significant impact at UC campuses.

A. R. Frank Wazzan, acting dean of UCLA’s prestigious school of engineering and applied sciences, was trying recently to recruit two professors--one for a high-level teaching and research post in engineering, the other to be an assistant professor of materials sciences.

In both cases, Wazzan’s offers were shunned. The engineer decided, at least for now, to stay in private industry. The professor of materials sciences opted for a similar position at the University of Pittsburgh.

The reason that UCLA lost out, Wazzan believes, is directly tied to the uncertainty surrounding Proposition 61, the public pay-limit initiative on the Nov. 4 ballot.

The measure, authored by anti-tax crusader Paul Gann, would limit compensation for all public employees in California to no more than $64,000 a year--considerably less than a top engineering or materials scientist could command almost anywhere else in the marketplace. Any exceptions to the limit would have to be approved by voters or, in some cases, by a two-thirds vote of the Legislature.

Although the measure would have a drastic effect at UCLA, where 1,399 faculty members could be affected, UC San Diego could have a higher percentage of its faculty affected. If Proposition 61 passes, 619 faculty members at UC San Diego, or 53.2% of the faculty, would have their salaries cut or frozen. This represents the second highest rate of affected faculty members in the UC system, second only to UC San Francisco, where 57.8% of the faculty--793 members--would be affected. That campus also has a medical school.

In addition to the faculty members at UCSD whose salaries could be affected by the initiative, 213 non-faculty employees would also have to take a wage freeze or cut.

Facing the possibility that recruits in other highly competitive fields, such as law, medicine and computer sciences, may also turn down offers and that many professors already at the university may leave for more lucrative jobs, UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young warned recently that his campus would become a “third-rate institution in a matter of two or three years” if Proposition 61 passes.

UC President David P. Gardner said the effect on the entire nine-campus UC system would be “devastating.”

“UC would never again be what it is now,” Gardner said, if the initiative is approved and ruled applicable to the university.

The state’s nonpartisan legislative analyst’s office estimates that the Gann limit would freeze or cut the salaries of 9,000 state employees, and perhaps an equal number of public workers at the county and local level. University officials, however, contend that it would apply to as many as 7,440 employees at UC alone, including more than 5,000 of the nearly 12,000 members of the teaching faculty.

The university’s more dire prediction is based on an assumption that the $64,000 limit would apply not just to salaries, but to benefits as well--a point on which the wording of the initiative is ambiguous. If courts should find that the limit applies to salaries only, a university spokesman estimated that 4,630 university employees would have their salaries cut or frozen.

But the effects of the measure would extend far beyond the university, said William B. Baker, UC’s vice president for budget and university relations. If UC could no longer recruit and retain the top-ranked scholars--the Nobel laureates, the acclaimed researchers in such fields as medicine and computer science--the state will lose its “competitive edge” in many fields.

“To the extent that the Gann initiative erodes the quality of higher education, the impact will be felt throughout the state for years to come,” Baker said.

Ted Kosta, an aide to Gann, said that such arguments were “absolutely not true.” Proposition 61, he said, was not intended to harm medical personnel or other faculty members in high demand in the state.

Instead, he said, it was aimed at administrators such as Gardner, whose salary is in excess of $178,000 annually, and at W. Ann Reynolds, who earns $121,255 a year as chancellor of the California State University system--to whom Kosta referred not by name but as “that woman down in Long Beach who has a pool service and a tennis service and a chauffeur-driven limousine.”

(A Cal State spokesman acknowledged that Reynolds’ university-owned residence does have a pool and a tennis court, but he said the chancellor drives herself to and from work in a 4-year-old university-owned Buick Century.)

“No one is irreplaceable,” Kosta insisted. “There are probably a couple hundred people in the state who could do Mr. Gardner’s job. But if you’re talking about medical professors--say a doctor of neurosurgery or a heart specialist--that’s a different story. They’re as American as mother and apple pie. . . . Most legislators would probably happily make an exception (for them).”

Although UC, as a state agency, is technically not allowed by California law to lobby for or against political causes, UC administrators and faculty have been working hard at “informing” voters around the state about the potential consequences of Proposition 61.

Top UC administrators have been speaking out against the measure for months, and UC alumni have been working at the local level to persuade voters to oppose it.

An off-campus faculty association at Berkeley has sent out nearly 20,000 “Dear Colleague” letters asking professors, administrators and other staff members to consider contributing 1% of their annual salaries to the statewide “No on 61” organization, headquartered in Burlingame. Robert Griffin, executive secretary of the Berkeley Faculty Assn., estimates that the letters have drawn about $275,000 in contributions.

There is some legal question whether the amendment would be applicable to UC because of the budgetary and administrative independence granted to it by the state’s constitution, according to Jim Holst, UC’s general counsel.

In a worst-case scenario assuming that it is applicable and that the pay limit applies to all compensation and not just salaries, a UC analysis found that Proposition 61 would freeze or reduce the compensation of about 10% of all UC’s employees. But Baker said that the 10% potentially affected represent “the cream of the cream of this place.”

Virtually no discipline would go unaffected, Baker told the UC Board of Regents, which passed a resolution in June opposing the plan. The largest group to be affected would be the professional schools--medicine, engineering, business, education, law, dentistry, nursing, optometry, pharmacy, public health, architecture and veterinary medicine. Of the teaching faculty in those areas, 74% exceed the compensation cap of $64,000.

In the university’s five medical schools alone, 90% of the teaching faculty would have their salaries cut or frozen. Conceivably, the university contends, some medical facilities would have to be shut down, and services would be affected at UC hospitals, which admit nearly 90,000 patients a year and treat more than a million outpatients.

THE EFFECT ON UCThese University of California estimates suggest how many salaries would be frozen or cut if Proposition 61 passes. The estimates assume that the measure’s $64,000 pay limit would include benefits--a worst-case analysis. The wording of the measure is ambiguous and may go to court if the initiative passes.

Teaching % of Other Faculty Teach. Empl. Campus Affected Faculty Affected Berkeley 852 40.7% 654 Davis 654 45.9% 214 Irvine 442 44.6% 106 L.A. 1,399 45.7% 457 Riverside 123 28.8% 104 S. Diego 619 53.2% 213 S. Fran. 793 57.8% 194 S. Barb. 344 36.3% 90 S. Cruz 123 26.7% 60