What a bargain! New president will cost San Jose State less
While California State University students got handed a 12 percent hike in tuition last week, IA is delighted to point out this extra little dose of outrage: At the same meeting, CSU trustees approved a $400,000 salary for San Diego State University’s new president, Elliot Hirschman — $100,000 more than his predecessor.
Even Gov. Jerry Brown was ticked off, griping in a letter about “the ever-escalating pay packages” being given to top administrators.
So, IA wondered, how much more will San Jose State pay its new president, Mohammad H. Qayoumi, when he takes over next month? actually, he’ll earn $9 less than 2008-2009 President Jon Whitmore. Qayoumi will be paid $328,200, the same amount as interim President Don Kassing. Whitmore was paid $328,209.
The cost of moving Qayoumi from Hayward will be cheaper, too. CSU reimbursed Whitmore $66,577 for the cost of selling his Texas home, and another $18,775 to move the family possessions.
Qayoumi greets the SJSU community on Aug. 22, from noon to 1 p.m., at Morris Dailey Auditorium, where he’ll offer updates and provide an outlook for the coming academic year.
So why is the new Prez’s pay 9 bucks cheaper than the last permanent chief’s? Not clear. IA suspects it was a typo. but as a welcome gift to Qayoumi, IA plans to hit the campus Monday hat in hand to scrounge up enough quarters to make up the difference. but instead of money, we’ll be treating Qayoumi to a true test for any new SJSU wannabe: a Burritozilla at Iguanas.
Hey, governor, what happened to all that ‘transparency’?
As a candidate for governor, Jerry Brown promised total transparency during the budget process. but he never said how open with the state’s books he would be after a budget was passed — IA suspects he never believed that would actually happen — and based on the recent experience of a group of Stanford students who got no luv from the guv, the answer appears to be: not very.
Like the state itself, California Common Sense is a nonprofit organization, although unlike Sacramento, the campus group — formed last year to get to the budget’s bottom line — is nonpartisan. The group went to the capital last week to introduce its online “transparency portal,” which, despite the name, is less Green Lantern than green eyeshade (www.cacs.org), an attempt to shine a light on what the Common Sense crowd calls “the state’s checkbook.”
Turns out, California doesn’t have one.
When the group filed its request for a detailed record of expenditures in April, what it got instead was an Orwellian reply from the governor’s deputy of legal affairs, Erin Peth, who said she was denying the request “because it is so onerous that the public interest served by not disclosing the records clearly outweighs the public interest served by the disclosure of the records.”
Brown spokesman Gil Duran poured salt in the wound in a statement to the Sacramento Bee. “Their demand for millions and millions of pages of documents detailing every stamp, paper clip and pen purchased by the state in the past five years was unreasonable and overly broad,” he said. Never mind that 20 states already provide exactly such detailed information.
“We think being able to account for every stamp, paper clip and pen is not only reasonable, but crucial to the public interest,” Common Sense President Dakin Sloss told IA. “I think citizens should be really indignant, because we’re the shareholders who are paying for California’s government. This seems like a mockery of transparency and accountability. We shouldn’t stand for it.”
Call him Superman: Honda comes to rescue of Innocence Project
The Northern California Innocence Project has its enemies, including the California District Attorneys Association, which is drawing up a report criticizing its research on prosecutorial misconduct as riddled with inaccuracies. but the group that roots out wrongful convictions also has some powerful allies, as illustrated last week in Washington, D.C.
Namely, U.S. Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, and the U.S. Department of Justice.
Republicans had put funding for the Justice Department’s wrongful-conviction review program on the chopping block. The program funds innocence projects around the country, including the one based at Santa Clara University’s law school.
But Honda managed to preserve $1 million of the $2.6 million program.
That was good news for the local Innocence Project, which has struggled lately to raise enough money. “We so appreciate Congressman Honda’s efforts,” said attorney Cookie Ridolfi, the project’s executive director.
Constant spices up talk radio with some steaming accusations
It might be vacation time for the San Jose City Council, but that doesn’t mean a total cease-fire between political opponents. Councilman Ash Kalra, an advocate for the council’s labor-oriented bloc, sent out an e-mail via moveon.org recently, asking that people sign a petition against Mayor Chuck Reed’s effort to declare an emergency to reduce pensions.
Kalra’s arguments were ones he raised before in protest: The mayor’s measure would curtail collective bargaining, the City Council should work with unions and the measure would provoke an expensive lawsuit.
Conservative Councilman Pete Constant, however, took umbrage at the Kalra missive. in an appearance on talk show host Brian Sussman’s show on KSFO, Constant took apart the Kalra email. “The email is crazy,” he told Sussman. “What it’s basically saying is, it’s lying.” when Sussman asked if the Kalra email meant to “tar and feather” Constant and the mayor, the councilman said yes.
We get the notion of passionate political debate. but lying? Tarring and feathering? We put IA’s fact-checkers on Kalra’s email, and we came up with thin gruel (there’s an argument about the meaning of “already earned” pensions, which Kalra says could be vulnerable and the mayor says he doesn’t want to touch). could it be that Constant is missing the rhetorical feast of his weekly appearance on the council dais?
Yerba Buena parents issue ‘ultimatum’ over choice of new principal
As IA reported last week, East Side parents are still seething over principal selections at two high schools, and now they are looking for recourse. Yerba Buena High School parents met Monday night and issued an “ultimatum” that the school board rescind its transfer of their principal, Juan Cruz. The board voted in June to elevate Associate Principal Tom Huynh to principal. Outraged Latino parents accuse the board of pandering to pressure to appoint a Vietnamese-American principal.
Cruz is being sent to head Santa Teresa High School, where parents are disappointed that their own associate principal, Greg Louie, did not get the job, even after being highly recommended by district advisory committees.
Yerba Buena parents are taking out their anger against trustee Patricia Martinez-Roach, who voted with the three-member majority for the transfers. Citing confidentiality of personnel matters, she refused to discuss the assignments with IA, except to say, “I stand by my vote in the best interest of all students.” Parents have been misinformed, she said, and she plans to meet with them.
Board President Lan Nguyen said his vote reflected his “confidence in the talents of the persons selected.” The other trustee in the 3-2 majority who voted for the appointments, Van Le, did not reply to IA.
At Santa Teresa, Louie supporters are consulting with an attorney to see if they have grounds to challenge the board’s selection. (Louie himself is not challenging being passed over, and reportedly has said he is ready to work with the new leadership.) Parents allege that a district employee told one of the advisory committees that the board wanted a Vietnamese-American candidate — which, if true, might violate fair employment laws.
Internal Affairs is an offbeat look at state and local politics. This week’s items were written by Lisa M. Krieger, Scott Herhold, Tracey Kaplan, Bruce Newman, Sharon Noguchi. Send tips to internalaffairs@mercurynews.com, or call 408-920-5552.
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