Dan Walters
By Dan Walters
dwalters@sacbee.com
Published: Wednesday, Sep. 28, 2011 – 12:00 am | Page 3A
Jerry Brown, California’s 73-year-old governor, has been showing signs lately of becoming a grumpy old man.
In comments to reporters, in speeches and in bill veto messages, Brown has complained about the quantity (too much) and quality (too little) of legislation reaching his desk, about the intransigence of Republicans on taxes and about the influence that anti-tax groups wield on those Republicans.
The responses are obvious, to wit:
• The Legislature generated less than half as many bills this year as it routinely did during Brown’s first governorship three-plus decades ago.
• While many of today’s bills are merely half-baked notions, symbols and trivia, so were many of those during his first stint, including some he sponsored.
• Yes, Republicans are generally more conservative today than they were in the 1970s and thus more opposed to raising taxes, but the Democrats are also markedly more liberal and less willing to make permanent spending cuts or reduce the “wall of debt.”
• While those anti-tax zealots to whom Brown refers do have heavy influence on Republicans, their clout is no more paralytic than what public employee unions wield on Democrats, as Brown discovered when he tried to fashion a bipartisan budget deal.
• Brown would have known all of this if he had been paying attention to the Capitol’s evolution during his 28-year absence from the Governor’s Office, but apparently he wasn’t – too preoccupied with his Quixotic campaigns for president and being a left wing radio talk show host, one presumes.
• Finally, no one twisted his arm to run for governor again.
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Nobody’s perfect, but some higher education chancellors are much less perfect as stewards of public funds than others. University of California Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau ($500,000 salary) has forgotten he is a steward of public money, not overseer of his own fiefdom.
UC Chancellor Birgeneau does not have a grip on financial realities. Trust the evidence.
Tuition increases exceed national average rate of increase.
Recruits (using California tax $) out of state, foreign $50,600 students who displace qualified sons, daughters of Californians.
Spends $7,000,000 + for consultants to do the work of his senior management.
(Prominent East Coast University accomplishing same 0 cost).
University accrues $150 million of inefficiencies over his 8 year reign.
Pays the ex Michigan governor $300,000 for lectures.
In procuring $3,000,000 consultants failed to receive proposals from other firms.
Latino enrollment drops out of state jump 2010(Krupnick Contra Costa Times).
Best in nation rank: # 70 Forbes.
Academic rank: QS academic falls below top ten.
Tuition to Return on Investment drops below top10.
Cal is most expensive USA public university.
NCAA: absence senior management oversight, basketball program on probation.
It’s all shameful: these illustrations are not isolated examples. There is no justification for such irregularities by a steward of the public trust. If UC chancellors don’t understand the importance of financial stewardship they have no business in a public office.
Chancellor Birgeneau’s self-indulgent practices continue. University of California Board of Regents Chair Sherry Lansing must vigorously enforce financial oversight of Birgeneau. Only then will confidence of Alumni, donors, legislators, Californians improve.
(My agenda is transparency. I have 35 years’ consulting experience; have taught at UC Berkeley, where I observed the culture & the way senior management works. No, I was not fired or downsized & have not solicited contracts from UC/Cal).