Rescinding of Cal State Raises Urged : Education: System Chancellor W. Ann Reynolds apologizes for her handling of the matter.

A committee of California State University trustees on Thursday recommended rescinding large and controversial raises given in January to 27 top administrators but did not call for the firing of system Chancellor W. Ann Reynolds.

However, Reynolds’ hold on her job won’t be certain until the full Board of Trustees meets today.

Headed by Trustee J. Gary Shansby, the special committee on the raises met Thursday at the Oakland Airport Hilton Hotel. In unusually strong language, panel members sharply criticized Reynolds and her staff for their secretive handling of raises, which has caused an uproar among faculty and legislators. During the tense hearing Thursday, Reynolds apologized.

The six-member committee unanimously called for an immediate suspension of the raises, which ranged between 21% and 43% and upped Reynolds’ pay from $136,248 last year to $195,000. Instead, the panel recommended temporary cost-of-living increases of less than 5% and also called for further study of the issues. The full Board of Trustees appears likely to adopt those proposals today.

Trustee William D. Campbell was the most aggressive in grilling Reynolds and her staff Thursday. Campbell focused on why Reynolds, in pushing for closed-door discussions of the raises last fall, seemed to break a 1984 promise to legislators that any such debate would be open.

“We look stupid and I hate that,” said Campbell, visibly angry that he had not known about such a promise until last month. “I feel embarrassed as a trustee.”

Reynolds said she had forgotten about that pledge. “I have indicated my most sober apology,” said the chancellor, who has headed the university since 1982.

After the meeting, Reynolds said she agreed with the salary rollback. She declined to comment on widespread speculation that her job is on the line because of the salary controversy.

In response to reporters’ questions, Shansby said his committee was not empowered to discuss the possible dismissal of any employee. Asked what might happen today, he replied: “Anything is possible.”

The chancellor and her staff contended that they wanted to avoid faculty and other staff unions from using top administrators’ salaries as a weapon in contract negotiations. So, Reynolds said, it became standard practice for the Board of Trustees to give general guidelines for top salary increases but to delegate final decisions to the trustees’ chairman and the chancellor.

Caesar J. Naples, Cal State vice chancellor for faculty and staff relations, told the committee that the initial goal was to raise salaries of the 20 campus presidents because their pay was falling behind national averages of comparable schools. Then, he said, the staff used a private consultant study of universities nationwide to see how much more vice chancellors and chancellors should earn.

However, Shansby and other trustees complained Thursday that they were given only a summary of the consultant’s report. In addition, they said they were upset that they had not known until recently that Reynolds earned, in addition to her Cal State salary, more than $90,000 last year by serving on corporate boards.

Campbell asked Naples if he had been aware that only 68% of UC President David P. Gardner’s salary of $230,600 came from state funds and the rest from donations and grants. Naples said he hadn’t known that. That point is important because some trustees felt that Reynolds and Gardner should be paid the same, although all of Reynolds’ salary is state-funded.

The Jan. 1 pay increases pegged annual salaries of the 20 campus presidents at $130,000, of five vice chancellors at $145,000 and of the executive vice chancellor at $150,000. Meanwhile, professors’ pay rose 5.7% to a top of $58,100.

The trustees are under intense pressure from the Legislature to roll back the raises. On Wednesday, the Assembly Ways and Means subcommittee on education said the raises should be only 4.7%.

Cal State’s general counsel, Mayer Chapman, faced particularly tough questioning Thursday as he insisted that open public meeting requirements had not been violated in the salary discussions last fall. Shansby’s committee showed a lack of confidence in Chapman by recommending that the full board today appoint an independent attorney to advise them on the salary dispute.

In other testimony Thursday, Cal State Executive Vice Chancellor Herbert Carter denied that he wanted to avoid state scrutiny in the university’s purchase of six cars, with take-home privileges, for himself and the five vice chancellors. Legislators are suspicious because the total price of those Ford Tauruses was slightly below the $100,000 ceiling that would have triggered outside review.

Last month, the trustees revoked the take-home privileges and placed the cars in a general auto pool. Still unresolved is how the money spent on them will be returned, as legislators demand, to the employees’ benefits fund surplus from where it was taken.