Proposed Contracts Anger Union : Colleges: Critics say plan would burden the district with debt and insulate top management from budget cuts.

Plans to award multiyear contracts to two top community college administrators have angered union leaders, who say the deal would burden the district with unneeded debt and further insulate upper management from budget cuts.

Chancellor Thomas G. Lakin wants to offer his top aides three-year deals to reward their loyalty and entice them to remain with the three-campus district.

He scheduled the matter for closed-door discussion at each of the last two board meetings, but the item was delayed while the district’s lawyer determines whether the issue should instead be decided in public.

The contracts, which will probably come before the Board of Trustees again next month, would be worth about $500,000, including salary and benefits.

Union officials complain that the contracts are unnecessary and that the district is already locked into multiyear deals with Lakin and three college presidents that approach $2 million.

“The board has been expressing such extreme concern about money, but here they want to commit (long-term) funds to administrators,” said Barbara Hoffman, president of the local American Federation of Teachers chapter.

“When you grant a multiyear contract, the rationale is you need to do that to entice good people to stay,” said Hoffman, a counselor at Ventura College. “But in times of real tight budgets, it doesn’t make any sense.”

Meanwhile, teachers just this week agreed to a 1% pay raise after three years without a salary increase.

An in-house report issued last month concluded that the college district may lose up to 5,000 students--roughly 20% of the district’s enrollment--because it cannot afford to adequately staff the financial aid offices.

The district stands to lose as much as $1.3 million in state funding next year if enrollment continues to dip, according to the district. Its annual budget is about $60 million.

The president of the union that represents the district’s secretaries and support staff also spoke out against the proposed long-term contracts for vice chancellors.

“The classified employees don’t like it,” said Leanne Colvin, a secretary at Moorpark College.

“The employees feel that it’s (being considered) because of the possibility of a new board coming in,” Colvin said. Lakin “might get a new board that won’t listen to him as much as this board does.”

Three seats on the board are up for election in November.

Lakin, who signed a four-year pact in February that pays him $119,000 annually plus perks through the 1997-98 school year, refused to comment on the specifics of his plan.

It would be inappropriate to discuss details of any issue that has not yet been formally presented to the governing board, he said.

But under the proposal, his two vice chancellors, Jerry Pauley and Jeff Marsee, would be granted multiyear contracts that would ensure that they would remain in Lakin’s service through the length of his contract.

Pauley also declined to discuss the multiyear contract proposal, except to say that “it’s going to wind up being a philosophical discussion” among the trustees.

Marsee is in Lake Tahoe at a conference and is unavailable for comment, his secretary said.

Members of the governing board, who will make the ultimate decision, seemingly are ambivalent or undecided on the issue. Several trustees said they had not yet made up their minds, and others said they see merits to both sides.

One trustee, however, said he is “totally opposed” to the concept.

“As public employees, those positions already have extensive statutory protections,” said Trustee Timothy Hirschberg, who is an attorney.

“It also isn’t fair to the numerous other classified employees and managers to give just these two (vice chancellors) additional contract rights,” Hirschberg said. “It ties the hands of future boards in making personnel decisions and job assignments.”

Other trustees were not so quick to derail the proposal.

“I am somewhat partial to it because when I worked as an administrator, I had a three-year contract,” said board President Allen W. Jacobs, who said he is undecided about the plan.

But “if you’re in a very high-level administrative position where you have to take unpopular positions, you need some protection,” he said. “It’s also a way of signifying support for top-level managers.”

Trustee Pete E. Tafoya, a member of the board of directors of the California Community College Trustees Assn., also said he has not yet made up his mind on the issue.

“But I’m leaning more against it,” said Tafoya, who said he will seek reelection this fall. “We have tried to maintain a sense of flexibility in our management so, if necessary, we can downsize.”

Tafoya said the state trustees group opposed long-term pacts with most junior college administrators at a meeting of the directors earlier this year.

Gregory P. Cole and Karen Boone, whose seats will also be up for election, said they do not have enough information about the plan to make an informed decision. Boone says she will run again, and Cole will instead seek a seat on the Thousand Oaks City Council this fall.

But Cole indicated that he may support multiyear agreements for Pauley and Marsee.

“A lot of our certificated (teaching) personnel have tenure,” he said. “So unless they do something egregiously wrong, they have lifetime contracts.

“In business, industry and government, employment contracts are becoming quite the norm now.”