At a time when the University of California should be focusing on the impact of the most severe budget crisis in the state's history, UC Board of Regents Chairman John Moores has been waging a bitter crusade against the university's admissions policies.

The San Diego Padres owner, a major donor to the 1998 campaign of former Gov. Gray Davis, was appointed by him to a 12-year term as a regent.

Since then, Moores has taken particular aim at UC Berkeley, alleging it is doing an end run around Prop. 209, the state's anti-affirmative-action initiative, by admitting some black and Latino students who are academically eligible for the University of California, but have far lower SAT scores than some white or Asian students. Not satisfied with the university's reports on admissions, he hired his own researchers to bolster his critique.

At stake is whether UC students will be even nominally representative of the diversity of this diverse state, or whether they will be largely Asian, white and more affluent, admitted solely on their test scores.

Moore's latest broadside appears in a Forbes magazine article he wrote accusing UC of "thwarting the law" "manipulating the admissions system" and "blatantly discriminating against Asians."

What makes Moore's attacks more incomprehensible is that he voted for a resolution in May 2001 instructing each of the UC campuses to select students based on "academic achievement, or exceptional personal talent, that encompasses the broad diversity of backgrounds characteristic of California." That is still UC policy.

To put flesh on the policy, in December of that year the regents voted to subject all freshman applications to a "comprehensive review" based on a range of factors, including some not related to academic achievement. Moores voted against that resolution.

What Moores usually neglects to mention is that all students subject to "comprehensive review," even those with lower SAT scores, have already qualified to attend a UC campus based on their grade-point average, high school course requirements and SAT or ACT scores.

Moreover, blacks and Latinos are still underrepresented at UC Berkeley, and make up a lower proportion of its enrollments than before the passage of Prop. 209.

As UC President Robert Dynes told The Chronicle editorial board, the regents -- and the public -- have a right and responsibility to know how UC's admissions policies are working, including whether they have racial bias. At the same time, he said, Moores' months-long campaign has been "a distraction."

Last week, in an unprecedented rebuke to their chairman, fed-up regents voted 8 to 6 to censure him for his denunciations of UC in the Forbes article, and to affirm UC's admissions policies.

At this time of crisis, the regents need a chairman who can unite them behind a plan to cope with budget cuts that threaten the university and the state. For now, Moores is a distracting, divisive force.