Lawmakers Call for Probe of UC Bonuses to Executives : Education: Action follows release of transcript showing regents’ concern for secrecy on outgoing president’s retirement package.

The controversy over UC President David P. Gardner’s retirement package escalated Thursday as legislators called on the auditor general to investigate bonuses for top UC executives.

The call for the inquiry followed the release of an embarrassing transcript of a closed-door meeting at which UC officials discussed whether to conceal the details of the retirement package for the outgoing system chief.

In the transcript of a March 19 meeting, Ronald W. Brady, UC senior vice president for administration, urged against detailed disclosure because “the danger there is that we certainly would call attention to it.”

The release of the transcript, which paints a picture of official subterfuge, has caused a public relations “holocaust” that may harm the university system unless Gardner’s severance benefits are reduced, said Regent William T. Bagley, a San Francisco attorney and former state assemblyman. “We’ve got to do something to repair this,” he said.

The regents last month granted Gardner a three-month administrative leave after his Oct. 1 retirement date and changed the vesting dates of his pension. The results were an extra $797,000 in cash for Gardner and a hike in his annual pension from $104,000 to $126,000 if he begins to draw it in 1993, when he turns 60. Gardner’s base UC salary is $243,500, the highest salary of any California public official. He also receives about $53,800 a year in housing aid, plus other perquisites.

State senators Quentin L. Kopp (I-San Francisco) and David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), asked fellow legislators Thursday to approve an investigation by the auditor general into regents’ actions dating back nine years that benefited 21 top UC administrators.

“It’s like they are living on Mars,” Roberti said of the regents, who govern the nine-campus university system. At a time when student fees are being raised 24% and faculty salaries are frozen, the public and Legislature are likely to revolt against Gardner’s pension, Roberti said. Likewise, Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), who is chairman of the Assembly Committee on Higher Education, called for the regents to reverse their March 20 actions.

A regents’ emergency meeting on the pension, scheduled for last night, was postponed until 2 p.m. Monday at UC San Francisco. The rescheduling occurred after Kopp and Regent Jeremiah Hallisey threatened a lawsuit because insufficient notice was given for Thursday’s meeting. The Monday session also has been changed from a private to a public one, with Gov. Pete Wilson and Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, both ex officio regents, expected to attend.

According to a spokesman, Gardner had no comment Thursday. “We are sure he wants to save everything for the meeting,” said spokesman Ron Kolb. Gardner, who is to become president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park in January, has said he is retiring from UC after nine years as president because of his wife’s death last year.

Monday’s meeting agenda includes discussion of “affirming, modifying or rescinding” the regents’ actions, and there has been speculation that Gardner may request rescission to spare the university further damage.

Regent Frank Clark, a Los Angeles attorney, said Thursday that he did not think there was “any great sentiment on the board to reverse this.” He said that Gardner deserved the benefits but conceded that the matter was handled poorly. “As a result, we took a beating we probably deserved,” Clark said.

Meanwhile, in an extraordinary embarrassment for UC officials, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Sacramento Bee obtained and on Thursday printed portions of the transcript of the March 19 subcommittee meeting at which regents discussed Gardner’s benefits and adverse publicity that could result. UC’s public affairs office released the document to The Times on Thursday.

According to the transcript, which is stamped “in strict confidence,” regents debated whether to reveal all the details of Gardner’s increased package immediately, to issue a vaguely worded notice without specifics or to put off notification until October. In the end, a two-paragraph item with no dollar amount mentioned was given to the press, saying the board had approved an administrative leave and a vesting change for Gardner.

Hallisey, at the March meeting, complained that there seemed to be an attempt to “mislead and not leave the facts out on the table of what the total compensation package is.”

Dean Watkins, a Palo Alto businessman and the regent who oversees executive compensation, said that the lump sum “may be troubling politically and may be the reason that we have been rather reluctant to pass out a lot of detailed papers in advance which would be floating around in Sacramento and might be misunderstood and might cause us all kinds of political problems.”

Regent Bagley, the former assemblyman, suggested that an unofficial straw vote be taken but that the official item be tabled until after the state budget passes in the fall. “There are no secrets in our game--in my little life in Sacramento there never were and this will somehow get out and it is a public record. I don’t think anybody would have to sue, you’d simply have to give it out,” he said, according to the transcript.

But Brady, the UC senior vice president for administration, urged against detailed disclosure unless they were asked for. “We are not normally asked to report on retirement income and generally speaking it has never been a subject matter of anybody’s interest.”

The full Board of Regents, meeting in Los Angeles, approved the package the next day. On April 3, Hallisey released the details, setting off the controversy.

However, Regent Harold Williams, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust, said that Gardner earned the package and that the administrative leave and vesting changes are being misinterpreted as gifts. “I would be surprised if it is changed,” he said.

Meeting Excerpts

Here are excerpts from the transcript of a UC Regents subcommittee meeting March 19 on UC President David Gardner’s pension package and how to explain it to the press and public: “The preemptive process would be to try to write some prose that explained what all this was about, and the danger there is that we certainly would call attention to it immediately and then generate questions from what you put out.”

--Ronald W. Brady, UC senior vice president for administration, urging against detailed disclosure of Gardner’s package “It’s going to draw some heat and I don’t think there’s any question about that. . . . I think we ought to be in a position where we respond openly and immediately to any questions that are asked whether it’s Legislature or the press or whatever. I think we’ll find that they don’t understand it and they won’t know what questions to ask, and I don’t know that we have an obligation to help them ask the questions either.”

--Regent Harold Williams, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust “Now the fact that it gets paid out in a lump sum may be troubling politically and may be the reason that we have been rather reluctant to pass out a lot of detailed papers in advance which would be floating around in Sacramento and might be misunderstood and might cause us all kinds of political problems, but that’s the reason that the matter has been handled the way it has.”

--Regent Dean Watkins, a Palo Alto businessman