Oh, except that it’s completely and utterly different. You’re comparing apples and chainsaws.
In the private sector, idiotic financial shakedowns will eventually cause the corporation in question to go out of business. If Fox News wants to pay Ailes $40 Million, then they’re technically accountable to shareholders and the profits from paying customers. California taxpayers don’t have a choice of not paying out the cushy salary of “selfless” public servants like Ms. Katehi.
In the public sector, these people are allowed endless screwups, termination appeals and golden retirements that would be ludicrous in the private sector. Plus there’s far, far more public employees drawing pensions and gaming the system. California alone has 20,000+ people pulling in 6-figure pension benefits last year alone. Not to mention that the state California pension fund is chronically, ridiculously underfunded - and regularly jacks up taxpayer-funded contribution rates to cover shortfalls in the billions. With a ‘B’.
Another tack they should take (and I believe they do) is get positive stories out in the media and get more web-eyeballs (links) to point at them, thus tipping the search-results in favor of the positive stories.
Of course they can, if there’s evidence that the employee did not do her job. In this case there is no such evidence, Katehi was an active and hard-working chancellor who also happened to make some awful decisions.
The salary structure for university administrators in California are subject to approval by the UC Board of Regents, who are responsible to the CA legislature. If you are a California resident and do not like the salary levels, take it up with your representatives. Meanwhile, note that Katehi’s salary was not out of line with that of other chief executives of comparable institutions, and well below that of chief executives of most other billion-dollar operations.
Drawing your pension is not “gaming the system”, the pension is part of the employment package so getting it is part of the deal. If you can get vested in the system at a high level of payout after just a few years of employment then that is certainly a problem, but it isn’t much different from the golden handshakes in the corporate world. Most of the 6-figure pensioins in California are for people who have worked in the system for 30-40 years, and 20,000 is not that large a number when compared to the 3.5 million Californians pulling a pension, and the reason that number is large is that California is a huge state offering many public services (such as schools) where people live a long time.
Ah, that must be why all those Wall Street executives were left jobless and penniless after the subprime mortgage collapse of 2008. No room for incompetence or screwups in the private sector, no sir! The free market sorts all that shit right out!
Napolitano didn’t become UC President until 3 years ago. Doubtless that’s why she didn’t sack Katehi 5 years ago. [Fun fact: then-president Yudof called in a former LA police chief to do the investigating.]
Misappropriation is in the eye of the beholder, unfortunately. In order to dislodge someone with a contract you have to prove the contract was violated. ETA: And the sad truth is that less and less of it is actually public funds anymore. Which is why chancellors are picked for their ability to throw cocktail parties and open wallets rather than, say, educate young people or (heaven forfend!) talk to them.
