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Wednesday, May 5, 2010

After shred-a-thon, CSU Stanislaus admits it has Palin speech documents | California Watch

After shred-a-thon, CSU Stanislaus admits it has Palin speech documents | California Watch

After shred-a-thon, CSU Stanislaus admits it has Palin speech documents

Is the open government ruckus over Sarah Palin’s speaking fee in Turlock sputtering toward a conclusion?
Terry Francke of Californians Aware, the First Amendment group that is trying to pry loose a copy of Palin’s contract for a speech at CSU Stanislaus, says the university has admitted for the first time that it has “800 or 900” documents about the event in its possession.
He says that’s “utterly at odds” with the university’s initial response to queries that were filed under terms of the Public Records Act, the state’s open records law.
At first, Francke recalls, the university said it didn’t have a single piece of paper about Palin's June 25 speech on campus.
It referred queries to the CSU Stanislaus Foundation. The foundation, which booked Palin for the event, signed a


State's high court says CSU professor can sue over retaliation claims

A California Supreme Court opinion issued this week clears the way for a CSU Long Beach professor to take the university to court for what he says was unlawful retaliation for whistleblowing.
Finance professor Lowell Runyon was demoted from his position as department chairman in 2004 by the then-dean of the College of Business Administration, Luis Calingo, according to court documents and a 2005 story in the Long Beach Press-Telegram.
Runyon said the demotion was retaliation for the tenured professor's complaints about Calingo. Runyon had criticized the dean for commuting each week from his home in central California, traveling abroad extensively and granting tenure to a job candidate despite faculty concerns, the Press-Telegram reported.
The university maintained that Calingo had demoted Runyon purely for job performance-related reasons. Runyon's demotion meant a loss of about $13,000 per year in compensation, according to court documents.
In response to Runyon's retaliation claim, the university launched an internal investigation in 2005. The investigator dismissed Runyon's claim, saying his criticisms of Calingo did not qualify as "protected