UC President Ends Costly Executive Leaves : Education: The move curtails a controversial perk at a time of shrinking budgets and soaring tuition. Administrators had been getting a year off with pay.

With the Legislature moving to curb executive pay at California’s two university systems, University of California President Jack Peltason announced Wednesday that he will eliminate costly full-paid leaves for high-ranking executives.

Peltason’s action--to take effect immediately--was calculated to end the latest controversy over golden parachutes for departing administrators at the nine-campus university system.

It comes as lawmakers say they are increasingly fed up with the salary and benefit packages given to school administrators, especially when the state continues to face a budget shortfall. On Tuesday, a bill to shift authority over top salaries at the University of California, the California State University system and community colleges to an independent commission cleared its first legislative hurdle.

Regent Ward Connerly, a Sacramento land-use consultant, said Peltason’s announcement was the university’s attempt to regain public confidence in a system that has been criticized for excessive administrative pay and perks. He said paid leaves to officials making $180,000 a year or more are perceived as “the giveaway of public money.” The leaves had been granted after an administrator’s term ended.

As an added measure, Peltason announced Wednesday that he would relinquish his own administrative leave and accumulated deferred compensation when he steps down as president.

Administrative pay has been controversial since both the UC and Cal State systems began dramatically boosting student fees in 1990. Next fall, UC students will be paying 166% more and CSU students 151% more than they did in 1989.

Former Cal State Chancellor Ann Reynolds was ousted after pushing a hefty salary increase for herself in a 1990 closed session. Two years later, the UC regents granted former President David P. Gardner a $737,000 severance package in closed session and then discussed how to keep it from the press.

In the wake of controversies over those moves, the Cal State trustees rescinded raises for campus presidents, and the UC regents vowed to reform their system of executive compensation. But both systems began raising hackles in recent months by awarding a new round of increases for top executives.

Last month, the controversy intensified when the San Francisco Examiner ran excerpts from a March staff meeting in which Peltason told administrators they would be exempted from a new policy that scaled back, but did not eliminate, yearlong paid leaves for administrators.

The excerpts prompted Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) to denounce Peltason and his aides as arrogant, and accelerated a move within the regents to do away with the leaves altogether, Connerly said.

UC spokesman Tom Debley said the controversy prompted Peltason, who had planned to discuss the leaves with the UC regents, to move faster than planned: “Yeah, the whole point of this is ‘Let’s get this behind us.’ ”

It is unclear whether Peltason’s action will defuse the legislative controversy over executive pay.

On Tuesday, the Assembly Higher Education Committee approved a bill that would revise the state Constitution to give an independent salary commission authority over future pay raises for top University of California, Cal State and community college administrators.

“Some people high in the ivory tower of California’s public education system just don’t get it,” complained the proposal’s sponsor, Assemblyman Paul Horcher (R-Diamond Bar). “They don’t get the fact that students have to come first, not administrative pay and perks.”

Horcher’s measure would turn administrative pay decisions over to the Citizens Compensation Commission, which sets salaries and benefits for lawmakers and statewide elected officials.

The Assembly Higher Education Committee approved the proposal 6 to 1. If passed by the full Legislature, the constitutional amendment would be placed on the ballot.

A second, more sweeping proposal, by Assemblywoman Betty Karnette (D-Long Beach), is scheduled for an upcoming hearing by the Higher Education Committee.

Both proposals are opposed by UC and CSU officials, who say the moves unfairly single out administrators for punishment.

Frammolino reported from Los Angeles, Gladstone from Sacramento.