By Count Friedrich von Olsen
Some or all of my readers may have caught that California State Auditor Elaine Howle has discovered that University of California officials and University of California President Janet Napolitano in particular hid $175 million of reserves from the public and even the UC system’s board of regents…
Napolitano, a Jerry Brown appointee, hatched a secret spending plan, according to Howle. And as a neat way of keeping all of this under wraps, Ms. Napolitano made sure that those most likely to blow the whistle on all of this – her staff – received healthy salary and benefit increases…
According to Howle, state bean counters found that UC’s central office had accumulated more than $175 million in reserves that it failed to disclose, including money it collects from campuses for a variety of programs, some of which make it more expensive for the students to attend school. Some of this money came from a series of university system initiatives ranging from reducing the university’s use of fossil fuels to increasing cybersecurity…
According to one of Howle’s findings, it appears Napolitano’s office inserted itself between survey takers and university officials at the various campuses, intercepting the results from those surveys and, what is a nice word to use here – altering – the results so it would look like the quality and cost of services the individual campuses were receiving from the central UC officer were better than they actually are or were. This survey was supposed to be confidentially accomplished. As it turned out, it was not confidential. Those who offered candid responses that were less than flattering about Ms. Napolitano and her bunch might soon be looking for new jobs…
Other findings by Howle are equally disturbing. Administrative spending after Napolitano took control shot up by approximately $80 million, or 28 percent, that is, between 2012-13 and 2015-16. According to the audit, the central office had not tracked those expenditures. In one of the oldest bureaucratic tricks in the book, Napolitano’s office received significantly more funding than it needed in each of the four years under review. It consistently requested increases in future budgets based on each previous year’s bloated spending allotment. And in 2015-16 top executives were paid a total of $3.7 million, $700,000 more than other top-paid executives at comparable state agencies. More shocking still, they spent no less than $21.6 million in employee benefits, including contributions to supplemental retirement savings plans…
In the sake of keeping things even here, the University of California disputes at least some, though not all, of Howle’s findings. The system claims its funding reserve is actually $38 million, not $175 million. A statement from Napolitano’s office said Howle “fundamentally and unfairly mischaracterizes the University of California Office of the President’s budget processes and practices in a way that does not accurately capture our current operations nor our efforts and plans for continued improvement.” That sounds like some more hiding the ball. It is hard for me to believe that the $137 million discrepancy could be an honest bookkeeping mistake…
How do we know all of this is really bad? Because the state’s top Democrats are lining up to take a shot at Ms. Napolitano, who is a prize Democrat herself, having once been the governor of Arizona and the director of homeland security under President Barack Obama. Now California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, who wants to be governor when Jerry Brown leaves, and other Democrats such as Sacramento Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, who requested the audit, and San Francisco Assemblyman Phil Ting have become critical of Napolitano. After years of laying down for Jerry Brown, now that he is a lame duck and his appointments and choices are being shown for what they are, each of these opportunists is ready to depart from the governor’s fold, hoping they can vault into higher office. This is political calculation at the worst. Like General George Patton said, “Politicians are the lowest form of human life. Democrats are the lowest form of politician.” Meanwhile, let’s start a collection for Ms. Howle. I have a feeling she is going to soon be in need of some money to tide her over while she seeks employment after Jerry Brown fires her as California State Auditor…