The CSUEU stands with the CFA in the request to have a town hall meeting on the CSU practices. To restore public confidence in the CSU and the master plan it is important for the CSU system leaders to step forward and face the taxpayers.

Pat Gantt, CSUEU President

To: CFA Board of Directors, Chapter Presidents, Lecturers' Council, Council for Affirmative Action, Political Action Chairs, and CFA Staff

From: John Travis , President

Please distribute the following message to the CSU community.

TO: Roberta Achtenberg, Chair CSU Board of Trustees; Charles B. Reed, CSU Chancellor; Members of the CSU Community

FROM:  John Travis , President, California Faculty Association

REGARDING: Your July 25 message regarding CSU Executive Compensation

July 27, 2006

Dear Ms. Achtenberg and Chancellor Reed,

By now, most CSU faculty members have received your email of July 25 "A Message from CSU Chancellor Reed and CSU Board of Trustees Chair Achtenberg" in which you address the issues regarding questionable and excessive executive compensation that were exposed in the San Francisco Chronicle on July 18 and 19.

We appreciate the sentiments in your communication expressing your commitment to "transparent administration" and to "upholding the public trust." We sincerely hope your words represent a new-found commitment on the part of the CSU Administration and Board of Trustees to public disclosure, executive accountability and good governance within the CSU.

In the spirit of transparency, we formally request that this letter be posted by email to the entire CSU community.

We were particularly interested to see that the Trustees "are open to the examination of all our executive compensation policies." After raising student fees by 76 percent since 2002, and dispensing millions of dollars in perks to top executives, apparently with the Trustees approval, we believe the institution needs to examine its executive compensation policies immediately.

The Chronicle reports on six-figure "transition" payments to retiring executives, lucrative "consulting" contracts to former executives, some of whom are working full-time on new jobs, and a policy that allows retired executives to remain on the CSU payroll.

We could not help but note that in the same email in which you discussed these reports of excessive executive pay agreements, you assert that "there was nothing secretive about these agreements."

Yet, in the Chronicle stories, Board of Trustee members were quoted in the newspaper expressing their shock and surprise when they heard about the executive compensation deals in place. Trustee Ricardo F. Icaza stated, "I am just appalled that this is occurring when the reality is that the budget has been cut so many times, and we cannot afford these kinds of perks. I was certainly not aware of it."

Moreover, the Chronicle story reported that many of the decisions were not made in public. Their story states, "Some of these extra perks and pay appear to have been awarded without prior knowledge or approval by the governing Board of Trustees, a 25-member body responsible for making the final decisions regarding executive compensation. In some cases, the chancellor notified the then-chairman of the board through private correspondence. But The Chronicle found no public record of board discussion, review or approval in those cases. Several Trustees said they were not aware of, or could not recall, the special pay and perks being doled out."

It seems that when your own Trustee members publicly state that they are not aware of certain compensation decisions that something is amiss with the executive compensation policies  both in the substance of the lucrative perks being awarded to CSU insiders and in the decision-making process by which the compensation is doled out.

Thus, we wish to take you up on your offer at the end of the email to examine the executive compensation issues:

"As a final note, we want to let you know that we are open to the examination of  all our executive compensation policies. It is appropriate that we strive for policies that make sense for the future while continuing to ensure compensation parity with comparable institutions for all CSU employees. If changes need to be made, we will do so in a thoughtful and public process."

We propose to hold a Town Hall Meeting this fall open to all California State University students and employees and to the general public at San Francisco State University . We would be happy to work with you and with the campus administration on an agreeable date.

A Town Hall Meeting would allow the CSU community to engage in an open, public, and "transparent" discussion about executive compensation issues.

In preparation for such a meeting, we urge you to provide to CFA and to the CSU community the web site addresses of the executive policies in question, which you say in your message are posted on the CSU web site. At the time of this writing, a cursory search of the CSU web site located only general documents; the specific policies were in password-protected documents labeled "confidential."

Also, you could certainly anticipate questions along the lines of points made in a San Francisco Chronicle editorial on July 20:

1. What actions are you taking to review the CSU policy that allows a retiring executive to take a job elsewhere while still drawing a full-time salary from CSU? How do you plan to revise this policy?

2. What actions are you taking to review the policy that allows a retiring executive to take an indefinite unpaid leave of absence such as the one that allowed former Chancellor Barry Munitz to be away for eight years while drawing multimillion-dollar salary and benefits at the Getty Trust and then return at will to CSU after being forced to resign from the Getty Trust?

3. What actions are you taking to review the policy that allows a top "retired" executive to stay on the public payroll, without disclosure both to the CSU board and the public?

4. What actions are you taking to review and revise the policy that allows the CSU to announce that a retiring CSU president will achieve "emeritus" status with "courtesies, but no compensation" -- while failing to mention that the same president will be well-compensated for a year or more?

5. What steps are being taken to address conflicts of interest on the Board of Trustees, as is the case with Bill Hauck who as a Trustee led the effort to raise students fees 76% while simultaneously serving as the high paid lobbyist for the California Business Roundtable, which has lobbied for reduced funding to the CSU system.

We look forward to engaging in an open, civil and frank discussion that will benefit the entire CSU community:  students, the parents and families of students, the faculty, the staff, administrators and the Trustees.

John Travis

President , CaliforniaFaculty Association