Senate OKs Bill to Make UC Officials Turn Over Corporate Director Earnings

University of California executives who have been collecting extra income serving on corporate boards would have to turn over such earnings to the state under a bill passed this week by the state Senate.

The measure by Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) was introduced in response to newspaper reports that outgoing UC President Jack Peltason had earned more than $100,000 serving on seven corporate boards, and that other UC administrators also served as corporate directors.

The bill would also apply to administrators in the California State University and community college systems.

“This is sort of symptomatic of the tendency of upper-level bureaucrats to take advantage of their positions in ways that don’t serve the educational institutions or the taxpayers,” Lockyer said.

The bill was approved Monday by the Senate on a 26-10 vote and sent to the Assembly.

Officials from the UC and CSU systems opposed the measure.

UC has tightened its policies regulating outside professional activities of administrators, but still allows its full-time executives to spend up to 52 days a year serving on corporate boards. UC Provost Walter Massey, who earns $219,000 from UC, stands to earn an additional $172,000 serving on three corporate boards that met 52 times in 1994, according to Lockyer.

College and university officials argued that the bill would put UC and CSU at a competitive disadvantage with private colleges, whose administrators are free to sit on corporate boards and benefit from such contacts.

Lockyer said such corporate “networking,” if beneficial to the university, “ought to be part of the job, rather than little side deals.”