Pension Rejection Hits the Press

In an earlier post, the press release from UCOP rejecting the lifting of the pension cap for high-paid execs was reproduced. So now the story is in, where else?, the press:

UC's top leaders reject bigger pensions for top earners: Thirty-six highly paid employees have threatened to sue if benefits were not based on full salaries. The UC president and the regents board chairman support the $245,000 limit. (excerpt)

Larry Gordon, LA Times, Jan. 5, 2011

The University of California system's two top leaders on Tuesday rejected a politically controversial demand by some of the university's most highly paid employees that they should receive larger pensions, based on a percentage of their total salaries, not on just the first $245,000. The dispute comes weeks after UC bolstered its long underfunded retirement plans by cutting benefits for all employees and raising the minimum retirement age from 50 to 55 for those hired after 2013.

…On Tuesday, UC President Mark G. Yudof and regents board chairman Russell Gould responded publicly to the demand, saying that the university was not obligated to provide the pension boost. They said the university had retained attorneys in case of a lawsuit.

…Those who signed the letter, details of which were first published by the San Francisco Chronicle, included Christopher Edley, UC Berkeley law school dean; David Feinberg, UCLA hospitals chief executive; Judy Olian, UCLA Anderson School of Management dean; Franklin Gilliam Jr., dean of the UCLA School of Public Affairs; Jack Stobo, UC system senior vice president for health services; and John Plotts, UC San Francisco senior vice chancellor.

…Gilliam said he would not benefit personally by any increase because UC policy grandfathered in employees who were hired before 1994 at a somewhat higher pension cap and because his salary, in any case, is $245,000. But he said he signed the letter, despite the bad economic timing, because he worried that without the pension boost, the university would lose out to schools like Harvard and the University of Texas in recruiting battles and would no longer be "a world-class university system." …

Full story at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-uc-pensions-20110105,0,6880072.story

Inside Higher Ed has a long story - lots of quotes from various folks - at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/05/california_pension_fight_politically_tough_for_yudof

The Sacramento Bee notes that the Berkeley Faculty Assn. has a petition going among faculty opposed to the pension increase. Story at http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/05/3299622/top-uc-officials-reject-execs.html

The San Francisco Chronicle has some juicy quotes from an anonymous angry exec:

Exec speaks out

But on Tuesday, one would-be beneficiary of the higher pension lashed out anonymously against the critics and at Yudof in particular. She said she feared retribution if she spoke on the record. "The university is revoking benefits that have been 'earned but denied,' " she said, invoking the phrase used by the regents in 1999 to describe retirement pay that executives would have received if the IRS hadn't imposed a cap on benefits a few years earlier.

"It should scare every state employee that this can be done," the caller said.

She labeled Yudof a hypocrite for the sweet retirement deal he worked out for himself when he arrived at UC in 2008 from the University of Texas. "The hypocrisy is that Mark Yudof is standing on a soapbox and positioning himself as the guy against high benefits for executives," she said. "But guess what? He's got the highest benefits paid in the history of the University of California."

Full story at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/01/04/BAF71H3L67.DTL#ixzz1AAxeefs4

It's easy to reject: