“(Chancellor) Block
noted in his presentation that the hotel and conference center would serve not
only academic conference attendees, but also donors, parents and alumni coming
to UCLA for activities ‘in furtherance of UCLA’s educational mission.’ But
critics have noted that the Internal Revenue Service has treated alumni, for
example, as members of the general public, suggesting that the university could
be exposed to the unrelated business income tax. According to ‘The Tax Law of
Colleges and Universities’ by Bertrand M. Harding, the IRS made this ruling
clear when it considered income from alumni use of a university’s recreational
golf course as unrelated to an educational purpose. An attorney from McKenna
Long & Aldridge, a law firm representing the neighborhood group Save
Westwood Village, noted the same IRS ruling at the regents meeting and in a
letter to UCLA.”
[There then follows some pithy quotes from yours truly in
the article - which modesty forces me to omit - but which point out that if you
don’t fill the 250 rooms, you can’t make money and that it is costless for
local hotel owners – who oppose the project – to complain to the tax
authorities if transgressions in occupancy occur.]
So why did the
Regents approve the project financing in July, after they originally refused to
do so in March? How did the sausage get
made?
“Since (March), Regent
Hadi Makarechian said, members of the (Buildings & Grounds) committee
participated in three or four conference calls and a number of meetings and
corresponded back and forth with UCLA officials to get answers to their
questions. Importantly, UCLA secured a July 3 letter to the regents from the
Luskins stating their desire to have the project on campus.”
CaliforniaWatch
obtained a copy of the letter from UCLA.
One paragraph is redacted. It is
carefully crafted – masterfully written! - to close off any option to the Regents
other than walking away from $50 million.
One sentence is particularly interesting:
“From the outset of
our discussion with UCLA, we were focused on the development of a residential conference
center on the UCLA core campus.”
Read that sentence
carefully and you will see it does not quite say – as it might seem - that the
Luskins originated the proposal. It says
they “were focused” on it. Who focused them? In fact, UCLA has never denied doing the
focusing “from the outset.” Indeed, as our post on the July Regents
session noted, President Yudof was careful not to claim that the Luskins
originated the hotel idea. He said
instead that they now wanted it as
proposed to the Regents but that he didn’t know about the history.
The full CaliforniaWatch article is at http://californiawatch.org/print/17171. It is also at:
The redacted letter can be read at:
No explanation is
provided for UCLA’s redaction in the article.
Update: The conservative aggregator website Flashreport lists the article above and refers to UCLA going into the "hotel business." Below is a screenshot from the Flashreport website:
(And everyone, including the Regents, refers to the facility as a "hotel.")
Update: The conservative aggregator website Flashreport lists the article above and refers to UCLA going into the "hotel business." Below is a screenshot from the Flashreport website:
(And everyone, including the Regents, refers to the facility as a "hotel.")
3 comments:
Has any of this money been allocated to endow professorships, fund scholarships for undergrads or fund graduate fellowships???
This is a nice blog! I just love sausages!
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