Documents detailing Palin's speaking fee were shredded, Yee says
When it began, the ruckus over Sarah Palin’s speaking fee at the state university in Turlock – and the school’s attempts to keep it secret – had a comic undertone.
Photo by Bruce TutenBut matters are quickly becoming deadly serious for the educators at CSU Stanislaus who have been resisting pressure from state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, to make public Palin's contract for a speech at a June fundraiser.
Now, Yee says he has proof that employees of the university have been shredding public documents about Palin’s speech. The lawmaker and the CSU students who found the evidence will take it to the attorney general's office in Sacramento today.
In letters to Yee and to two First Amendment groups, CSU Stanislaus had claimed it has no relevant documents about the speech, which was booked by the university’s Stanislaus Foundation.
California Watch learned that Yee’s office was contacted last week by students who said they had seen university personnel taking bags of shredded documents from the offices occupied by the university foundation to the dumpster.
The students took pictures and retrieved some shredded documents, including portions of a copy of Palin's contract, and gave them to the lawmaker.
Yee had already asked the attorney general’s office to investigate the university’s refusal to turn over documents on the issue. University President Hamid Shirvani has said Palin’s contract with the foundation required that her fee remain confidential. Yee thinks the school is paying her in excess of $100,000.
Officials who willfully refuse to disclose public documents can be prosecuted for misdemeanors.
Yee has said he had independently obtained a copy of one university document on the subject – an email sent to everybody on campus to “clear up any confusion and extinguish
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A 13-member advisory committee has been studying how to build and implement such a system since October. The work was triggered by a 2008 law that ordered state officials to improve the quality of "early learning" McClatchy papers collaborate on statewide pension story
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Led by the Sacramento Bee's ace, data-driven reporter Phillip Reese, the article found that the state's 80 largest cities and counties face a looming "unfunded liability" of $28 billion in their pension plans. It appeared Sunday in the Bees in Sacramento, Modesto, and Bakersfield, as well as in the Merced Sun Star and San Luis Obispo
Faculty pay increase is smallest in memory, doesn't count furloughs
Led by the Sacramento Bee's ace, data-driven reporter Phillip Reese, the article found that the state's 80 largest cities and counties face a looming "unfunded liability" of $28 billion in their pension plans. It appeared Sunday in the Bees in Sacramento, Modesto, and Bakersfield, as well as in the Merced Sun Star and San Luis Obispo
Faculty pay increase is smallest in memory, doesn't count furloughs
The average salary for a full-time professor in California increased by less than 1 percent over last year, according to a new national survey from the American Association of University Professors.
Photo by Pam Roth
The figures are part of a national report that found salaries for full-time faculty increased by 1.2 percent from the previous year – the lowest year-to-year increase recorded in the 50 years since AAUP first conducted the annual survey, Inside Higher Ed reports.
Yet the data is an understatement of the real state of affairs, particularly for faculty at public institutions in
Photo by Pam RothThe figures are part of a national report that found salaries for full-time faculty increased by 1.2 percent from the previous year – the lowest year-to-year increase recorded in the 50 years since AAUP first conducted the annual survey, Inside Higher Ed reports.
Yet the data is an understatement of the real state of affairs, particularly for faculty at public institutions in
