Listen to the Regents Meeting of Nov. 18, 2015

The Nov. 18 session of the Regents dealt with audit and capital projects. Concerns were expressed about over-regulation leading to higher costs. Some issues were raised about general reporting on incidents that required corrections by management in that the severity of these incidents and what they involved were not reported.

It was announced that the long-troubled UCPath system would be issuing paychecks (including direct deposits) come December 1, apparently only for UCOP at first. But the next rollout - presumably assuming the UCOP experience proved OK - would be to UCLA (including ASUCLA), Merced, and Riverside.

Various capital projects were reviewed. Notably, one for the San Diego hospital had cost overruns of $100 million. Phrases such as "hard lessons learned" and words such as "incompetent" were used. Regent Makarechian noted that incomplete initial plans invite construction contractors to claim that actual costs were higher than projected and to obtain additional payments. He suggested suing the architect for providing such plans. The San Diego chancellor was duly apologetic.

Note: Although the full Regents don't meet again until January, there will be a meeting of the Committee on Investments on Dec. 1. Yours truly will (with a lag) provide a review and an audio link of that meeting.

In the meantime, you can hear the Nov. 18 meeting at the link below: