NEWS ANALYSIS : Regent’s Job--A Plum Sours in Time of Discord

The late 1960s and early ‘70s presented the University of California with many difficult political questions and controversial personalities: Vietnam protests. Herbert Marcuse. People’s Park. The burning of a bank building in Isla Vista. Angela Davis. Free speech. As a result, the UC Board of Regents, the governing body, was itself badly torn by dissension.

A generation later, the current regents’ board is emerging from what some members and observers say has been the worst period of infighting and political pressure since that Vietnam War era. The issues, of course, are different, centering on executive compensation, funding cutbacks, student fee increases and the selection of a new system president. But like 20 years ago, regents anticipating pleasant honorary appointments suddenly found themselves in hot seats surrounded by personality conflicts and public criticism.

To outsiders from more rough-and-tumble worlds, occasional outbursts of sarcasm or arguments at regents’ meetings still seem genteel. To insiders, the airing of dissent was a shock after the imperial calm reinforced by system President David P. Gardner, who left office in October after nine years. A furor over Gardner’s large severance package erupted in March, leading to painful policy reviews.

Some of the controversy may ease today, when the regents are expected to pass a reform package limiting benefits for top administrators and more clearly explaining how high salaries are figured. Although some regents deny that debate has riven their board, everyone seems to want to move on to more basic financial issues facing the nine campuses, which enrolled 165,786 students this fall. Officials predict smoother days under the new president, Jack. W. Peltason, whose jocular personality already has eased some of the tension.

Jeremiah Hallisey, the most vocal dissident among the 26 regents, said he gets a cold shoulder from fewer regents these days compared to when he first denounced Gardner’s package. “Some of them are getting more friendly,” said Hallisey, a San Francisco attorney.

In closed session in March, the regents awarded Gardner $857,000 in pension vesting and deferred pay he accrued but otherwise would have forfeited with his resignation. The payments were publicly reaffirmed in April, but were followed by much soul-searching about procedures.

The situation was exacerbated by a more than 10% drop in state funding for UC. As a result, the regents last month raised annual student fees by $605, to a total of about $3,650 for Californian undergraduates, excluding room and board. The fees, which are double those of four years ago, may go higher before next fall, officials warn.

Meredith Khachigian, in her second year as board chairwoman, insists the real tension was created by state aid cutbacks. “It’s difficult times everywhere, mainly economic. And in these times, a lot of things come out that might not when the money is available,” she said. “It’s been a difficult time for the board, but I still see the board as one that hangs together for the best of the university.”

Regent Vice Chairman William T. Bagley, a former assemblyman, said that only a handful of the 26 regents ever felt snubbed or in conflict with others. Still, he expects more open debate under Peltason than during Gardner’s presidency.

“David Gardner was so good and so credible and such a forceful leader that the board more or less fell into lock step. In an overall sense, that’s not too healthy. I don’t mind diversity of views, without fighting.”

Peltason’s style “is refreshingly different. He is smart as a fox but comes across as a wonderful, humble human being. I think the board is going to give him the benefit of the doubt,” Bagley added.

Some key dissenters will leave the board soon. Hallisey and Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, both appointed by Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., have only three months remaining on their 12-year terms. They are part of a small caucus, along with regents W. Glenn Campbell, Frank Clark and Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy and sometimes a few others, who urge more dramatic reforms. Gov. Pete Wilson, an ex-officio regent, won’t reappoint Hallisey. Burke, who took office this week as a Los Angeles County Supervisor, is not seeking a new regents term.

“There is a sense, if not of relief, then a sigh that we don’t have to contend with Jerry (Hallisey) because he is unpredictable,” said one regent, who like some others interviewed for this story requested not to be identified.

Some regents also say the summer retirement of senior vice president for administration, Ronald W. Brady, will remove a flash point. Critics accuse Brady of designing the most controversial executive perquisites.

Burke and Hallisey are Democrats on a board increasingly dominated by Republican allies of Wilson and former Gov. George Deukmejian. Khachigian’s husband, Kenneth Khachigian, was a top adviser to Deukmejian, and other influential Republican regents include Palo Alto businessman Dean A. Watkins and Sacramento developer Roy T. Brophy.

Such political tracing can be misleading since Campbell, a Hallisey ally, is the former director of the Hoover Institution, the conservative think tank at Stanford University, while regent Harold Williams, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust, is a Democrat and was a strong defender of Gardner’s severance package.

Hallisey complained that most conservatives on the board feel threatened by criticism in a way that the more politically balanced board a decade ago did not. “There was much more collegiality, much more dialogue at the meetings,” Hallisey said. “Now, any disagreement is taken as a personal attack.”

Chairwoman Khachigian countered: “I think there are enough differences of opinion on the board even though one party is greatly represented.”

Burke said the tension on the board has been the worst during her 12 years and probably since the Vietnam era. Other officials around the system echo her assessment. But there is disagreement over whether the university has been hurt.

As head of the systemwide Faculty Senate, UC Berkeley professor Martin Trow recently served two years as a non-voting representative on the board. “I don’t think the occasional ill temper is very significant in face of the fundamental issues facing the university,” Trow said. “The problems are so large, they simply overwhelm these little bickerings. . . . Our biggest challenge is how to preserve excellence in the face of these extraordinary declines in state support.”

With routine confirmation by the state Senate, eighteen of the 26 regents are appointed by governors for 12-year terms that expire at staggered times. Seven other regents serve “ex-officio,” by holding other posts: the governor, the lieutenant governor, the Assembly Speaker, the state superintendent of public instruction, the UC system president and the president and vice president of the statewide alumni association. In addition, every year regents select a new student representative.

Regents are not paid but are reimbursed for travel expenses for their nine or 10 meetings a year plus conferences. The spots usually are coveted political plums because of the considerable prestige. But after recent scrutiny and continuing budget gloom, the jobs may be less desirable, as they became in the Vietnam era.