Chancellor Gets Too Much

Trustees in the Coast Community College District are facing angry, militant teachers in this year’s salary discussions now under way. And understandably so.

The board has given Chancellor David A. Brownell, who announced his retirement in June after serving 2 1/2 years as the district’s chief executive officer, a lucrative retirement package that includes lifetime fringe benefits.

The generous so-called “golden handshake” was especially notable in comparison with board action involving teachers’ salaries.

Last winter the board gave no pay raises to the 700 teachers at the district’s Orange Coast College, Golden West College and Coastline Community College campuses. It cited “severe budget problems” as the reason for the pay freeze. And the teachers face a possible loss of reduced fringe benefits.

By contrast, Brownell’s early retirement package gives the already highest-paid community college chancellor in the county a 53% pay raise from $93,756 a year to $144,000 for his final year in office. Brownell’s deal with the district calls for him to be on the payroll to assist the new chancellor in his final contract year and then serve after his formal retirement on a part-time basis as a consultant at half of base pay--$72,000. Also unusual are the lifetime insurance fringe benefits for the chancellor and his wife instead of a standard cutoff date.

The district defends the pay raise for Brownell by explaining that it owed the chancellor 75 days of unused vacation time that legally had to be paid him. But by increasing his salary instead of just paying the vacation time, the district raised the base figure used to compute the chancellor’s retirement pay. We can understand the teachers being upset. But that kind of pension padding should upset district’s taxpayers, too.

The chancellor of Saddleback College in Mission Viejo is paid $76,000 a year. The chancellor of the North Orange County Community College District based in Fullerton makes $85,600 and the chancellor of Rancho Santiago Community College District based in Santa Ana gets $86,158 a year. No matter how they try to explain it, we don’t see how the Coastline Community College District board can justify paying its chancellor between $57,842 and $68,000 more in annual salary than his counterparts earn at the other community college districts in the county.