Routine Regents Meeting Turns Into Battle

A simple gubernatorial advisory committee meeting mushroomed into a full-scale legislative battle Thursday, with Senate Democrats warning that the confirmation of two UC regent nominees may now hang in the balance.

The fight erupted after Gov. Pete Wilson’s appointments secretary attempted--unsuccessfully--to block Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) from putting state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) on a committee charged with evaluating University of California regent nominees Gerald Parsky and Peter Preuss.

The spat escalated when the governor’s office insisted that the committee be allowed to meet with the nominees in private--despite objections from Hayden, Lockyer and one of the nominees. Lockyer demanded that the closed-door proceeding be transcribed by a stenographer and said the squabble made it less likely that the Senate will confirm the pair.

“If the governor’s staff is going to throw up barriers to full evaluation of his appointees, we can do that too,” Lockyer said. “We can just say ‘We’re not going to confirm.’ ”

Wilson’s spokesman Sean Walsh defended the governor’s decision, contending the private meeting was to “allow all members of the review panel to have a frank back and forth discussion, without pressure from any special interests and away from the bright klieg lights that could cause some [panel members] to play to their constituencies or spar for political points.”

Lockyer vowed to make the transcript of Thursday’s meeting public so that Californians can consider the nominees’ answers on everything from student fees to diversity.

By the end of the three-hour closed-door meeting, tempers had cooled slightly. Lockyer emerged to announce that when formal confirmation hearings take place, senators will consider a broad range of issues--beyond the governor’s staff’s apparent attempt to stonewall him.

Most important, he said, was whether the nominees appear to have the backbone to withstand political pressure and make independent decisions.

Parsky and Preuss are the first regent nominees since last summer, when Wilson led the board in dismantling affirmative action at UC. Because of that vote, and the political interference that some feel Wilson exerted, the two--who together have donated about $100,000 to the governor’s campaigns since 1989--are expected to face an especially tough confirmation battle.

“We’re of the view that radical changes in policy were adopted pursuant to the governor’s presidential campaign,” Lockyer said of the affirmative action vote of last July. “That should not happen.”

Thursday’s meeting was just the first step in what Lockyer said could be a yearlong process. After considering recommendations from each member of the advisory committee, Wilson is expected to formally appoint the two men sometime this month. They are allowed to serve on the board for up to one year while the Senate considers their confirmation.

In 1994, the Senate rejected Wilson’s appointment of a Chinese businessman who was seen as too willing to increase student fees--the first such rejection in 125 years. Since then, three more nominees have been approved.

Some members of the advisory committee, which included one regent, one student, an alumni representative and several citizens, said Thursday that they did not feel they learned where Preuss and Parsky stand on some issues important to the university.

Parsky, a Los Angeles investment executive and an active Republican fund-raiser, was described as cautious in his answers. But he reportedly told the committee that during his decade as a member of Princeton University’s board of trustees, he supported affirmative action programs.

Preuss, who is president of a San Diego medical research foundation, was more freewheeling in the committee interview, participants said. But the lone student member of the committee, UC Santa Barbara undergraduate Kris Kohler, said he opposes Preuss’ appointment because Preuss was unresponsive to students during an earlier stint as a temporary alumni representative on the regents board.

“When I confronted him with that, he was not very apologetic,” Kohler said after Thursday’s meeting.

Because the media were excluded from the proceedings, the substance of the closed meeting was all but overshadowed by the very public wrangling over which senators would be allowed to attend.

Groundwork for that battle was laid Wednesday, when Lockyer asked the governor’s appointments secretary, Julia Justus, if he could send another senator to the meeting in his place because he had a scheduling conflict. Justus said no.

Lockyer, determined to have the Senate represented, then arranged for Hayden--who heads the Senate’s select committee on higher education and has led a campaign to make regents more accountable to the public--to be appointed to a spot reserved for a member of the public. Again, Justus challenged him, arguing that a legislator could not occupy that spot.

Hayden prevailed and attended the meeting, as did Lockyer, who hastened to conclude his earlier business so he could be present. There, he learned that Justus had allowed a Republican legislator, House Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) to designate a substitute--Assemblyman Bernie Richter (R-Chico)--to attend the meeting in his place.

Apparently, said Lockyer, the governor’s office was applying “a different standard to Assembly Republicans than they did for Senate Democrats.”