In an effort to increase financial transparency within
California’s public university administrations, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
signed a bill last week that will require any university decisions on executive
pay to be made at public meetings.

Senate Bill 190, the Higher Education Governance
Accountability Act, will affect both the UC and CSU systems. Authored by state
Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), the bill’s primary purpose is to shed light
on proceedings pertaining to executive compensation when they occur within
meetings of the UC Board of Regents and the CSU Board of Trustees.

According to the bill, university officials are now required
to vote on all executive compensation packages in an open session of a
subcommittee and a full board. Additionally, the bill requires full disclosure
of any compensation package, along with an accompanying reasoning for the
package and public comment on the item at hand. SB 190 also closes a loophole
that allowed the UC regents and the trustees to sidestep state-mandated open
meetings law.

The UC Office of the President responded to the passage of
SB 190 by citing the implementation of similar university policy regulations
last year.

“This legislation aligns with and supports the practice we
put in place over a year ago that requires all compensation for UC senior
managers to be approved in public,” UCOP spokesman Paul Schwartz said in an
e-mail.

According to Adam Keigwin, Yee’s communications director,
further codification of these regulations in the form of state law was
necessary to ensure that such accountability remains a priority.

“What they’ve implemented is just policy, and at any time,
theoretically, they could go back and change that policy, and this law will
prevent that from happening,” Keigwin said. “While we’re glad they’ve made some
of those changes, we don’t want changes in leadership or changes in the board
[of regents] to change that policy.”

Last year, both university systems faced criticism when
newspaper reports revealed a number of undisclosed compensation perks that were
awarded to top executives without public knowledge. According to Keigwin, SB
190 serves as a way for the universities to re-establish legitimacy and public
confidence.

“The board of regents violated the public trust by approving
exorbitant compensation packages behind closed doors,” Keigwin said. “SB 190
will hopefully allow us to regain that trust. At the end of the day this is the
taxpayers’ money, this is the students’ money, and the students and the
taxpayers deserve to know how this money is being spent.”

Although SB 190 does not officially become law until January
2008, the state Senate has requested that universities begin honoring the new
regulations without delay.

“There’s no reason they need to wait until January to
implement the bill, especially in light of the fact that they’ve started their
search for the new president, so the public should know what’s going on there,”
Keigwin said.

First introduced in February and co-authored by Assemblyman
Anthony Portantino (D-Pasadena), SB 190 was amended several times before
receiving unanimous approval by the state Senate last month.

A similar proposal, Assembly Bill 775, was rejected by the
Senate Appropriations Committee last year.