Earlier this month, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 8, a university disclosure bill in an effort to bring transparency and accountability to universities and colleges in California.
The bill will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2012.
The university disclosure bill was proposed three years ago by Democratic Senator Leland Yee from San Francisco. The purpose of Senate Bill 8 is to enforce that UC, CSU and city colleges abide by the state public record laws.
“This will end up being a good thing because before this, we didn’t know who was spending what,” Fresno State student Gerardo Reyes said.
The bill was announced in 2010 after the CSU Stanislaus Foundation agreed to pay Sarah Palin to speak at CSU, Stanislaus. When asked, the university refused to show the public how much money was spent on Palin’s visit. Students later found shredded parts of the contract in a campus trash bin, as well as many other documents regarding her visit.
The scandal resulted in a lawsuit filed by CalAware, The Center for Public Forum Rights. The university was held accountable for its actions and forced to reveal the contract to the public.
Once the financial information of the contract was released, it showed that the university has included a $75,000 speaking fee for Palin as well as round-trip, first-class airfare. In the contract, the university also gave Palin the option of flying by private jet instead of first class; she chose the private jet.
Other events such as at Sonoma State where a loan of $1.25 million was given to a former foundation board member two days after he resigned, have contributed to the passage of this bill. The California Senate Majority Caucus website also states that “the Attorney General’s office and the FBI are investigating a number of auxiliaries at Sonoma State.”
Among a list of similar examples demonstrating the need of transparency, the website also mentions that in 2001 the Fresno Bee was denied information concerning the “identity of individuals and companies that received luxury suites at the Save Mart Center at Fresno State.”
“The last couple of years we have been told that the university has no money, but through auxiliaries we get a lot of donations,” Fresno State student and Students for Quality Education member Luis Sanchez said. “But students don’t know how or where that money is going because auxiliaries is considered private,”
“It makes perfect sense,” Fresno State student Terry Chhoeung said. “I understand why they would want to know how much money [the universities] are spending. And there’s not really anything the universities can do to fight it because if they reject it they could be questioned.”
This is not the first time that Yee has attempted to get a transparency bill passed. His previous two attempts were denied by then Republican Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“That looks really suspicious,” Reyes said. “He could have been using money that he shouldn’t have been.”
The CSU Office of the Chancellor reported in 2009 that “20 percent of its $6.7 billion budget, or $1.34 billion, was held in their 87 auxiliaries and foundations.” Before Yee’s transparency bill, universities could hide money by not reporting it. Now, with Yee’s bill, universities are required to report.
“Universities have always been transparent,” Chancellor’s office spokeperson Liz Chapin said.
Chapin said that Yee’s bill only changed the fact that universities are now required by law to list their finances as public record.
Yee’s bill also protects university donors.
“To maintain donor privacy, those that give more than $2,500 will still be able to remain anonymous because not all donors want their information released to the public,” Chapin said.
On the CSU Office of the Chancellor’s website reports of finances are available for some universities. Fresno State financial information is available for those who wish to know how much money the university is spending and receiving.