Gut and amend going nowhere

Good morning and happy Hump Day. In anticipation of the mad dash to pass legislation prior to the rapidly-approaching end of session, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon has no intentions of stopping the practice loathed by many rank-and-file legislators called “gut and amend.”

Even as a measure to end the most egregious offenses waits for voters in November, even as the procedure is discouraged by leadership and even as the move is prohibited by the Legislature’s rules, Rendon will continue to allow bills to be gutted and amended, his staff confirmed.   

Gut and amend is a catchall phrase thrown around Sacramento. In general, it means removing all or a substantial part of a bill and replacing it with new provisions that have little or nothing to do with the bill’s original intent, especially after the bill’s shell has passed through a part of the process, like a committee hearing or a vote in one chamber.

Proponents say there are instances when it’s necessary, but detractors say it leads to bad legislation and limits the power of those with an opposing view. The times that irk opponents the most are when a bill is gutted and amended sometimes just hours before a vote.

CalWatchdog has more.  

In other news:

• Embattled UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi resigned on Tuesday, “done in largely by pepper spray and ego,” writes The Sacramento Bee.
• “San Diego Republicans run from Trump,” reports the Voice of San Diego. Of course, not all San Diego Republicans, according to Talking Points Memo.  

• Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, has for a second time amended a bill that would have imposed tough new campaign contribution limits on Board of Equalization members to avoid conflicts of interest, but now simply calls for a study of possible new limits. “Hill introduced Senate Bill 816 after The Times reported that donors were circumventing a $250 contribution limit to board members by funneling the money through political action committees or giving several donations — 45 from employees at one tax firm — of $249 each,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

• “Stockton Mayor Anthony Silva presided over his first council meeting Tuesday night since his arrest last week on charges that included child endangerment and supplying alcohol to minors. The public took to the microphone offering both support and criticism,” writes Capital Public Radio. 

Assembly:

• Several hearings today, including Appropriations. 

Senate:

• Several hearings scheduled.

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @capwatchdog

Katehi’s suspension was also spurred by allegations her son and daughter-in-law, who are employees of the university, got large and unwarranted raises. But Napolitano also made plain her disapproval of Katehi’s attempts at damage control, saying her decisions raised “serious and troubling questions.”

Now it has emerged that UC spent $158,000 in its own damage-control effort in a bid to counter the harsh criticism Napolitano and other UC officials faced after State Auditor Elaine Howle released an audit in March that said UC was admitting out-of-state students over more qualified in-state students solely for budget reasons. Howle also said UC officials sharply increased out-of-state enrollment rather than take even basic steps to control spending when state funding plunged because of the sharp decline in state revenue after 2007.

UC planned PR blitz before audit even released

UC officials first learned of Howle’s scathing audit in February. That’s when the UC Office of the President decided to mount a PR campaign that “included a report rebutting the conclusions of the audit; digital ads on websites, Facebook and Twitter; and sponsorships on public radio stations throughout the state,” the Bee reported.

An aide to Napolitano disputed the idea that state funding or tuition dollars were used. Instead, the aide told the Bee that the $158,000 came out of the “endowment cost recovery fund.” The fund was described as using endowment earnings for various purposes, including trying to promote university fundraising.

Some of the $158,000 was used to release a glossy 32-page report soon after the audit was published that depicted UC as reacting resourcefully and intelligently to the state funding crisis. Another major expenditure was for radio ads promoting UC on public radio stations around the California.

UC officials insisted there was a major difference between what Katehi did and what the UC Office of the President had done. They said that UC had followed standard processes and had used consultants for PR campaigns before, and that Napolitano had never objected to Katehi’s use of consultants — only to the evidence that Katehi had made  “material misstatements” about her role in efforts to scrub UC Davis’ online image.

But if these distinctions help UC avoid allegations of hypocrisy, the UC damage-control campaign still rankled some in the Legislature who said UC should take the audit seriously — not pay to try to gloss it over.

“I am in total disbelief once again,” Assemblyman Mike Gipson, D-Carson, told the Bee. “They have taken this elitist attitude that they can do whatever they want to do whenever they want to do it.”

Is the end close for UC Davis’ Katehi?

Good morning!

The end appears to be near for UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi, who last week was placed on a 90-day paid leave pending an investigation into a number of things, including concerns of nepotism.

Katehi supporters have cried that this is one big sexist conspiracy in the media, reports CalWatchdog. But don’t tell that to UC President Janet Napolitano, who ordered Katehi’s leave, or Diana Lambert, one of the two dogged Sacramento Bee reporters on this story. 

In other news:

• Former state legislator and former Orange County GOP Chairman Scott Baugh has not ruled out challenging Dana Rohrabacher, the longtime OC congressman, reports The Orange County Register. Baugh opened a campaign account earlier this year, saying he was getting ready for Rohrabacher’s retirement, which an aide to the congressman said was not coming this cycle. The two appear headed for a showdown. 
• A new poll shows business tycoon Donald Trump leading substantially in California in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is leading on the Democratic side, reports the Los Angeles Daily News. 
• April personal income tax revenues fell short of expectations by about $1 billion, reports Capital Public Radio. Critics/analysts have said the state is overly dependent on personal income tax. 
• However, Democrats believe that with an overall improved financial situation, this is the year Jerry Brown, the generally frugal governor, will lighten up on spending, reports the Los Angeles Times. 

Assembly:

• Full slate of hearings. Joint hearing to discuss the proposed Firearms/Ammunition Sales ballot initiative. 

Senate:

• Full slate of hearings. Packed Judiciary Committee agenda. 

Gov. Brown:

• At 9:30 a.m., Brown will attend the CHP Memorial Ceremony in West Sacramento. 
• At 8:15 p.m., Brown will speak at the Berggruen Institute Anniversary in Beverly Hills. 

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

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New followers: @CCATDP @InnerCityLaw

Last Monday, UC President Janet Napolitano reportedly told Katehi to quit or be fired. She cited evidence of abuse of power as well as a series of controversies about Katehi moonlighting without permission and her pursuing costly damage control efforts related to a campus police officer’s pepper-spraying of peaceful protesters at UC Davis in 2011. 

But in another in a series of unusual decisions, Katehi defied Napolitano, leading to her suspension. The electrical engineer’s strategy appears to be intended to force the university to pursue a formal investigation before it can move to oust her. While that inquiry gears up, Katehi and her allies have launched a public-relations counteroffensive, with her attorney claiming she’s being “scapegoated.”

‘Implicit gender bias’ behind suspension?

Meanwhile, two UC Davis professors claim she is only the latest UC woman executive to be a victim of sexism and double standards.

“Women in leadership positions are often the victims of intense implicit bias and, as a consequence, of the phenomenon of ‘single storyism’ — the reduction of their actions to a simple narrative that appeals to the biases of a broad section of society, in this case implicit gender bias and women being incompetent for their position. Whatever they say or do in response is twisted to fit the ‘single story,’” wrote Linda F. Bisson and Rachael E. Goodhue.

That claim may be tough to sustain, given that Napolitano is behind her ouster, with her name on the Wednesday letter that outlined UC’s concerns:

In the letter, Napolitano said UC would investigate the employment of her daughter-in-law, including raises that boosted her pay by more than $50,000 over two and a half years. She also expressed concern about whether Katehi made “material misstatements” about her role in UC Davis spending $175,000 on an attempt to scrub online search results of negative stories about the school – and Katehi herself – resulting from the 2011 pepper spraying of students.

That’s from a Sacramento Bee round-up of the problems that led to Katehi’s forced exit.

Katehi admirers unhappy about her woes

While the largest UC student group welcomed Katehi’s suspension after calling for her firing on April 15, the Bee noted that not everyone was happy. Many Sacramento business and civil leaders are admirers of what Katehi has done at Davis, 15 miles west of the state capital.

Official Portrait – Chancellor Linda Katehi | Flickr, courtesy of UC Davis

Two state lawmakers took to Twitter on Thursday and joined the growing chorus of Democratic legislators who are calling for the resignation of UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi after a series of unflattering stories by The Sacramento Bee.

On Wednesday, The Sacramento Bee reported that the university paid consultants at least $175,000 to scrub the Internet of negative postings about the pepper-spraying of students in 2011, in an effort to improve the school’s and the chancellor’s reputations.

The Bee also reported that between 2009 and 2015, the school’s strategic communications budget increased from $2.93 million to $5.47 million.

In response, Democratic Assemblymembers Freddie Rodriguez of Pomona and Mike Gatto of Los Angeles took to Twitter to condemn Katehi and demand her resignation.

.@ucdavis don't spend millions to cover up a bad reputation. Invest in students. Time for Katehi to resign. https://t.co/Fodn4fNV7V

— Freddie Rodriguez (@AsmRodriguez52) April 14, 2016

Spend millions on PR while student costs soar? It is time for Katehi to resign. @dianalambert

— Mike Gatto (@mikegatto) April 14, 2016

Other incidents

In March, it was reported that Katehi, who receives $424,360 annually as chancellor, earned an additional $420,000 between 2012 and 2014 as a board member for textbook publisher John Wiley & Sons.

Katehi had also came under fire in March for violating University of California policy by accepting a $70,000 per-year seat on the board of DeVry, a for-profit university.

Katehi has since stepped down from DeVry board and pledged $200,000 in John Wiley & Sons stock to a scholarship fund. And she apologized.

But those actions weren’t enough and Democratic Assemblymembers Luis Alejo of Watsonville, Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego, Kevin McCarty of Sacramento and Evan Low of Campbell had called for her resignation, who Gatto and Rodriguez have now joined.

In Katehi’s defense

UC Davis spokesperson Dana Topousis would not say whether Katehi intended to step down (which likely means the answer is “no”). In a statement responding to only the most recent article from The Sacramento Bee, Topousis defended the overall cost of communications.

Here is the entire statement:

“Communicating the value of UC Davis is an essential element of our campus’s education, research, and larger public service mission. Increased investment in social media and communications strategy has heightened the profile of the university to good effect.

“As part of this overall communications strategy, it is important that the excellent work underway at UC Davis with respect to educating the next generation of students, pursuing groundbreaking research, and providing important services to the State is not lost during a campus crisis, including the crisis that ensued following the extremely regrettable incident when police pepper-sprayed student protesters in 2011. Communication efforts during this time were part of the campus’s strategic communication strategy. In fact, one of the main objectives during this time was to train staff on how to effectively use digital media to improve engagement with our stakeholders.

“Communicating the value of UC Davis is among the many reasons why our campus was able to increase its endowment to $1 billion last year, garner more than $700 million in research grants, and attract the highest caliber of students and faculty from around the country, with a record number of student applications this year.

“Most of the growth in the communications budget is tied to raising the visibility of our College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the School of Veterinary Medicine, both rated the best in the nation.

“In a 2014 Chronicle of Higher Education Report titled, “Higher Ed Marketing Comes of Age,” the mean amount that universities spend on marketing was reported as $3.7 million, with the highest at $25 million. We believe UC Davis compares favorably with other institutions of higher learning. Communications spending represents a small fraction of the $4.3 billion operating budget of UC Davis.”

This week, the University of California issued a new open access policy that gives anyone in the world free access to scholarly articles authored by UC employees. That means clinical faculty, lecturers, staff researchers, postdoctoral scholars, graduate students and librarians at the system’s 10 campuses and numerous research labs will finally be allowed to share their work with the public.

“With the Presidential Open Access Policy’s inclusion of scholarly articles authored by a wide range of UC researchers, the University affirms its mission as a forward-looking public research institution in service to the people of California and to scholars around the world,” said Susan Carlson, the University of California’s vice-provost for academic personnel and programs.

UC Academic Senate paved way for open access

The latest UC decree builds on an open access policy previously-adopted by the UC Academic Senate, which represents more than 8,000 faculty members at all 10 UC campuses. In 2013, UC faculty members granted the public access to their research, but lacked the authority to require open access for work of non-faculty members.

“The Faculty of the University of California is committed to disseminating its research and scholarship as widely as possible,” states the Open Access Policy for the Academic Senate of the University of California, which was first passed in the summer of 2013. “In particular, as part of a public university system, the Faculty is dedicated to making its scholarship available to the people of California and the world.”

The new UC open access policy covers “all employees and students at the University of California campuses, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, the UC Medical Centers, the Office of the President, and all auxiliary University locations not already covered by the Academic Senate Open Access Policy.” As a result of the change, UC says that its open access publishing policies now “cover more authors than any other institutional OA policy to date.”

“Until now, tenure-track faculty have had the privilege of passing such policies to govern themselves, but at most universities, such faculty are a fraction of the people who do research and publish articles,” said UCLA professor Christopher Kelty, who chaired the Presidential Open Access Policy Task Force. “Extending the same rights to those who aren’t part of a faculty governance system is an important and difficult step – I’m thrilled we have accomplished it.”

Walled content of academic journals

Previously, research produced by university employees was commonly walled off from the public in academic journals that routinely charge high subscription fees to access material. The old model empowered publications, which could dictate terms and conditions to professors and researchers in desperate need to “publish or perish.”

Advocates for open access say that old policy stifled innovation and academic research.

“Students have already recognized that significant academic contributions come from all corners of our university,” said Meredith Niles, a recent Ph.D. graduate from UC Davis who was active in a graduate student association involved in crafting the new policy. “Now UC has taken the next step to affirm what graduate students have already demonstrated: a strong desire to make all scholarly research, regardless of its source, openly available to all members of society.”

UC authors will continue to retain legal control over their work and will not be required to publish in open access journals. Instead, the new policy merely commits UC employees to submit a copy of their work to a free digital database maintained by the university. The new policy, which takes effect for scholarly articles published after October 19, 2015, also does not apply to books, textbooks or student theses.

According to UC officials, the system is responsible for 2 percent of the world’s total research publications.

UC slow to act on new technology

The University of California’s hasn’t always been quick to embrace new technology. Last year, the University of California initially banned reimbursements for travel expenses incurred with sharing services, such as Uber, Lyft and Airbnb. That led to a public outcry with some Democratic politicians calling for the UC system to modernize its travel policies.

“Sharing economy companies offer consumers more choices at often less cost than comparable services offered by traditional vendors,” Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a member of the UC Board of Regents, wrote at the time. “Prohibiting UC employees from using services that cost less is simply bad for the university’s bottom line.”

Eventually, the UC system backed away from its ban. This year, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation authored by Asm. Ling Ling Chang that guarantees state workers’ ability to use sharing economy services on state business.

Recent events have shown what hooey this is. It’s not just the crown jewels of the UC system — the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses — that continue to thrive. It’s also the lesser-hyped schools:

The Orange County Register notes an honor for UC Irvine.

“As the University of California, Irvine approaches the milestone of its 50th year of operation in 2015, the campus has been honored again by Times Higher Education magazine as the top-rated university in the United States for schools under 50 years old.”

To the south, UC San Diego continues to stake out a global reputation as a leader in biotech and the increasing integration of health care and nanotechnology.

It’s also just an outstanding all-around university. Overall, the school is ranked the 39th-best in the nation in the latest U.S. News and World report rankings.

But in its core specialty — life sciences — UC San Diego is ranked seventh-best in the world. This ranking is only likely to rise as the La Jolla area builds on its reputation as a global biotech-nanotech innovation hub.

Finally, out in the Inland Empire, there is UC Riverside, a campus that rarely gets much love from anyone.

Until now.

As the Sacramento Bee reported this week, in a Time magazine analysis based on Obama administration standards unveiled last year, the Riverside campus gives students the best value for their tuition based on “metrics such as graduation rate, tuition costs and percentage of students who receive Pell Grants, the federal low-income scholarship, to determine which schools offer the best value.”

The Time list puts UCSD second, UC Irvine fourth and UC Davis sixth.

All that budget misery seems to agree with the UC system.

Or rather, all that alleged budget misery seems to agree with the UC system.

By Katy Grimes

Instead of being held accountable for bad behavior and rule-breaking during an Occupy protest on the campus of UC Davis last November, a group of college students are going to be rewarded, and receive settlement payments.

The announcement last week that the University of California will pay $30,000 to each of the 21 students and alumni who were pepper sprayed at a protest against tuition increases last November is a travesty.

There might have been a lesson in this story somewhere, but not when spineless government progressives are in charge.

Instead of teaching these students some responsibility and accountability for their actions, the liberals running the UC cowered, apologized, and decided to pay them for their bad behavior… because it’s always easier to look like a hero when spending other people’s money.

Even the ACLU gets $250,000 out of the $1 million settlement and a chance to assist UC Davis in rewriting it’s protest policy. What a racket.. This taxpayer shakedown worked like a charm.

But what those involved are glossing over is that it’s taxpayers on the hook for the $1 million settlement and additional costs to litigate the case. The money is not coming out of the pockets of UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi, or any of the UC officials responsible for the “poor communication and planning throughout the campus chain of command.”

“The settlement should be a wake-up call for other universities and police departments,” said Michael Risher, staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, the AP reported. “If the First Amendment means anything, it’s that you should be able to demonstrate without being afraid of police violence.”

However, students were warned that they were conducting an illegal protest and that if they did not disband, they would be pepper sprayed. In fact, according to this video, there was an agreement between the cops and the protestors. They actually agreed to be pepper sprayed.

Peaceful, illegal protest

After dismantling the unauthorized tent encampment, the shortened video widely circulated does not show the UC Davis police officer walking up and down the line of protestors telling them they will be pepper sprayed if they do not get up and stop blocking the side walk.

“During peacefully Occupy Movement, police came in to tear down tents and proceeded to arrest students who stood in their way,” the written explanation on the video states. “Once students peacefully demanded the release of the arrested, a police officer unnecessarily pepper sprays the students to open a path for the rest of the officers.”

Nor does the video show some of the protestors following, taunting and surrounding the campus police officers. Protestors then refused to allow the police past unless they released the protestors that had already been arrested.

Calling this a non-violent, peaceful protest is another big lie. The UC Davis students were holding an illegal campus protest, several had already been arrested, and they were warned that they would be pepper sprayed by the campus police.  You can see in this video that the students agreed to be pepper sprayed.

Settling with spoiled, whiny thugs

The UC settlement is a travesty of justice and a capitulation by a spineless, liberal university administration. The protesters should never have been allowed to congregate, build a camp, and occupy the campus quad, which is against campus rules. The administration and campus police could have prevented this situation by just arresting the protesting miscreants when they began their illegal protest.

In this video, the police politely asked “Will you allow us to do our job, or are you going to make us take action?” The protesters shouted “F– the Po-lice!” and other vulgarities. The police then told the protesters that, if they did not stop interfering in the lawful arrests of other protestors, they would be sprayed with pepper spray.

“Do you understand?,” the police asked. “Yes, we understand,” the protestors replied. “And you’re okay with that?”  “Yes, we are okay with that.”

Only after receiving permission did the now-famous pepper spray sweep take place.

No rights were violated, except the rights of the taxpayers who had to pay for 30 minutes extra overtime for the cops.

The apparent goal of these protests was to get a video of some purported police malfeasance. The protesters got their little 15 minutes of fame, and thanks to ACLU legal representation, also got $30,000 each.

These purported anarchists claim to abhor the government, yet it is the very thing they turned to in order to fight their legal case. They attend a heavily subsidized state-run university, and worked the California legal system, all with help from UC Chancellor Linda Katehi.

The Yolo County District Attorney’s office announced that it would not file charges against any of the police officers involved after finding that the officers perceived they were dealing with a hostile mob.

Other people’s money

How much will the next protest cost taxpayers? The legal precedence has now been set to pay protestors should police force be necessary.

Gov. Jerry Brown wants voters to approve his tax increase measure in November. But the UC Davis episode and outrageous settlement will probably go a long way to helping defeat Proposition 30.

‘The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money,” famously said former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. We are indeed running out of other people’s money, and I don’t think voters are real keen on giving any more to the incompetents running the state.

By K. LLOYD BILLINGSLEY

Former UC Davis official Jennifer Beeman was sentenced on Thursday to 180 days in jail and five years probation. Beeman must also pay back $10,525 she embezzled from a campus program she headed, according to officials with Yolo County Superior Court.

On April 14 Beeman pleaded no contest to two felony counts of embezzlement and falsifying accounts. Neither charge involved her falsification of campus sexual assault statistics.

For 16 years Beeman headed the UC Davis Campus Violence Prevention Program (CVPP), established in 1979. In that cause, the highly touted administrator proved creative with statistics, charging that as many as 700 UC Davis students were victims of rape or attempted rape. UC Davis eventually acknowledged the exaggerations.

Beeman “significantly over-reported the number of forcible sex offenses that were committed on and around campus in 2005, 2006 and 2007,” the university said in a press release. The true figures were “less than half” those Beeman reported. From 1999 to 2005, the CVPP received four federal grants totaling $3,168,923, according to a UC Davis audit.

UC Davis officials would not tell CalWatchdog whether the university had disciplined or censured Beeman over the falsified statistics. She remained in her job, which paid $6,118.13 a month, not including benefits. In 2008, UC Davis placed Beeman on administrative leave, with pay, “in connection with allegations that she improperly charged travel expenses to a federal grant.”

Beeman’s use of program funds led to a year-long investigation, and she was suspected of embezzling more than $10,000. UC Davis police chief Annette Spicuzza told CalWatchdog that “She was investigated as anyone would have been in the same situation.”

Arrested last December 9, Beeman faced nine felony charges of misusing public funds, embezzlement and false accounting. She struck a plea bargain with Yolo County prosecutors, who dropped seven of the charges. Beeman will be eligible for “home detention,” but Yolo court officials provided no details as to how this would work.