CUCFA continues to call for the audit of construction bonds
November 3, 2009
Russell Gould, Chairman
UC Regents
1111 Franklin St., 12th floor
Oakland, CA 94607
fax (510) 987-9224
Dear Chair Gould,
At the October 28 meeting of the Regents Committee on Audit and Compliance, I requested that the committee perform an audit of the source of repayment for all projects funded by General Revenue bonds, specifically to address whether any education fees are being used and what other components of General Revenue have been diverted or increased to fund such projects if education fees are not being used to subsidize projects that don’t pay for themselves. The text of my presentation to the committee is attached.
My call for an audit was seconded by several parties at that meeting. Attached, please also find presentations by Chris Rosen, Secretary of the Council of UC Faculty Associations; Charles Schwartz, Professor Emeritus, UC Berkeley; Derrick Wortes, AFSCME; and Annie McClanahan, graduate student in English.
CUCFA continues to call for the audit of funding sources for the repayment of construction bonds. We do not accept CFO Taylor's claim that his office is unable to perform one of the procedures essential to accountability in the use of public or of student funds. The procedure should be simple, and reassuring, if UCOP requires the campuses to show in advance the source of collateral and repayment for each project, and then monitors compliance. If UCOP must start from scratch in figuring out how campuses fund construction projects, then this fact alone could be as consequential as the result of any full-scale audit.
For such an audit to occur with respect to each campus, it would first be necessary for UCOP to disclose the proportions in which all sources of General Revenue are returned to their campus of origin.
Can you please respond in writing to this request? We look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Robert Meister, President
Council of UC Faculty Associations
cc: Mark G. Yudof, President of the University of California
Attachments: Regents Committee on Audit and Compliance presentations by Robert Meister, Chris Rosen, Charles Schwartz, Derrick Wortes, and Annie McClanahan.