In July 2006, the San Francisco Chronicle published a series of articles about compensation for former CSU executives who were leaving their positions, and highlighted these as purportedly "secret" compensation packages that included transition pay, professorships and special benefits. Specifically, the articles indicated that executives were frequently granted transition pay as part of the CSU Executive Transition Program, which was, in fact, adopted in a public meeting of the CSU Board of Trustees (BOT), despite the articles’ implications otherwise. As a result of this press coverage and feedback from supporters and policymakers, the BOT revised the Executive Transition Program in November 2006 to eliminate some of the perceived abuses and as a result of .

The publication of these stories and activities by the California Faculty Association (CFA) brought the issue of compensation to the forefront for many in Sacramento resulting in two proposals. (Both initiatives that are currently moving through the process deal with the need for “transparency” and the perceived need for reform of the BOT.) One of these is SB 190 (Yee, D-San Francisco), which applies to both UC and CSU, and reinforces BOT procedures and current statute, which requires all compensation decisions to be approved at a public meeting, with public input. The CSU has been working with Yee’s office to address a few issues that needed changes for the bill to achieve its objectives. The last remaining issues is language that would require any BOT advisory committee that includes even one trustee (versus current law of three or more) to be conducted pursuant to the public meetings requirements in the Bagley-Keene Act. We believe this would result in less active involvement of Trustees in CSU policy and development discussions contrary to Yee's intent.

The other bill, AB 1413 (Portantino, D-Pasadena) is sponsored by the California Faculty Association, and goes much further than the Yee bill.

AB 1413 would revise the appointing authority for the CSU Board of Trustees; revise the voting process for the board; establish new requirements related to compensation for University executives; revise expenditure and accounting categories for CSU and require an annual report from the Commission on Postsecondary Education (CPEC) of those expenditures; and require CPEC to conduct an annual review of compensation at the University.

The changes proposed by this bill will do nothing to increase transparency or accountability, which is the expressed purpose of the legislation and would in fact only create confusion and duplication of existing law. Under the current law the BOT is already subject to stringent public meeting requirements. The changes to the BOT membership and voting also do nothing to increase transparency, but instead dilute the perspective our ex officio members should be bringing to the decision process. The reporting required by this bill will result in millions of dollars being diverted away from the classroom, due to the significant costs of reprogramming our accounting systems and contracting for market compensation studies for all faculty, administrators, and executives.