Listen to the First Part of the Regents Meeting of 9-17-2013

But before you listen, note that we have been archiving Regents audios because of regental policy not to archive them for more than one year.  Today, there was a bit of a mishap in the handling of the Regents live stream.  As a result, yours truly sent the email below to an official in the Regents' office:

As you may know, the UCLA Faculty Assn. posts the audios of regents meetings online since it is apparently regents policy not to archive the recordings for more than one year online.  As a result, I turned on my recorder at 1 pm today, Sept. 17, since it was difficult to know when the closed session would end and the open one would begin.  As it turned out, you had a hot mike at the supposedly closed session and in fact broadcast parts of it online.  I won't post those parts but I have attached as a wma file the excerpts that went out in public for your info.  They appear to contain sensitive material about market sharing of health services in Orange County.  My sense is that if the broadcasting and archiving were turned over to one of the campus AV services, this kind of thing would not happen.  It is likely, however, that a campus AV service, such as at UCLA, would want to archive the recordings online indefinitely, the standard practice now for many govt. entities.
Note that if the regents didn't have the one-year-only policy, I would not have had a recorder turned on since the open sessions would have been archived indefinitely.  Who else may have heard the closed session and/or recorded it, I don't know.  

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The Regents agenda is below for the first part of the meeting:

Agenda
Tuesday, September 17
1:00 pm Committee on Health Services (Regents only session)
1:20 pm Committee of the Whole (public comment session)
1:40 pm Committee on Health Services (open session)

During the public comment session, there were complaints by students that it was difficult to set up meetings with incoming UC president Napolitano, who isn't here yet.  Students also requested that some Regents meetings should be held in southern California for the benefit of the campuses there.  There were complaints that out-of-state tuition was too high, concerns about online education, and reference to some kind of campaign (unclear what it is) involving prisons vs. higher ed funding in California.

After the public comments, there was discussion of a strategic plan and construction related thereto for health sciences at UC-San Diego.  Then there was discussion of a planned merger between Children's Hospital-Oakland and UC-SF.  Much of the discussion revolved around unstated concerns about the "financials" of Children's Hospital and assurances to the Regents that nothing would be done that would consummate the marriage until those concerns were resolved.  Given the tone of the assurances, the merger may be more shaky than anyone wanted to say.  There is slated to be more discussion of the merger in the Finance committee tomorrow. 

You can hear the first portion of the meeting at the link below: