Republicans aim to block reappointment

by Brian Leubitz

Herbert Carter, originally appointed by Gov. Schwarzenegger in 2004, has presided over the CSU Board of Trustees as its Chair since 2009.  As you may know, those years have not exactly been a picnic for CSU or the state budget.  However, being the guy who raised tuition while also paying higher executive salaries is going to make you a target no matter how diplomatically you handle it.

He’s up for confirmation on his reappointment, and it isn’t going smoothly.  Apparently, the Republicans are up in arms, UP IN ARMS I tell you, about high executive pay.

Last week, Sen. Joel Anderson (R-San Diego) sent a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown asking him to withdraw his appointment of Carter.

“Since 1984, Herbert Carter has been near the center of every CSU pay hike scandal,” Anderson wrote. “The CSU trustees don’t seem to understand that their ‘compromise’ of setting a CSU’s president’s pay at $325,000 is insulting to California students, parents, and taxpayers.” (LA Times)

Without jumping into the morass that is CSU executive pay, I will say that hiring for a job at institution in chaos isn’t exactly an easy prospect. And the tuition/fee issue, well, you are never going to win in that position. But Republicans playing the tuition card seems kind of rich when they are all about cutting funding for the institution.

Perhaps Gov. Brown will have to come to some compromise on this candidate, but in a world where this is one of the few votes that matters for Republican support, they are doing their best to be heard.  Whether it has any larger impact on anything whatsoever is a different question altogether.