Government corruption does not surprise us at the Daily 49er. We’ve been around for 60 years. It happens. When it happens in our university system, though, surprise has no bearing on the issue. Corruption, when it occurs in the hands of those entrusted with educating our youth, is much harder to swallow.
This jawbreaker of government corruption involves improper reimbursement of expenses incurred by David J. Ernst, former chief of information technology services for the California State University system.
Ernst’s reimbursements included trips to Shanghai, Melbourne, London and Amsterdam. The total reimbursement — which involved traveling expenses, expensive dinners for cronies and enormous transportation costs — amounted to more than $150,000 over three years.
Ernst’s comments to the media include, “As with many such reports, the issues in this audit are much more complex than they may appear on first reading.”
Prior to the audit’s release, Ernst took a similar job with the University of California system. After results of the audit were released, employees in the UC rightly called for Ernst to reimburse the CSU and for the UC to fire him.
So far, Ernst has paid back a little more than $1,000 and claims the rest was justified as doing business for the CSU.
We’re not indicting anyone. We have always been fans of due process, but interpretive complexity ranks low on the scale of cop-outs. To date, our favorite cop-out has been the lack of recollection.
Ernst either improperly used university money or he didn’t. At this point, his actions almost seem trivial because of the larger corruption accusations levied at former campus presidents and board of trustee members.
In a time when every penny counts, why should there be any avenue for corruption? The CSU system needs a window of budget transparency.
The CSU and UC intolerably cling to a California Public Records Act loophole. They hide budget information about foundations and auxiliaries. The truth is, they don’t want transparency exactly because of the type of abuse allowed when secrecy is the norm.
At Cal State Long Beach, this loophole extends to the CSULB Foundation, Associated Student Inc., and 49er Shops.
The biggest argument for maintaining the loophole is that if the university opens up the books, people who donate anonymously will stop doing so.
OK, that makes sense. We do not oppose the preservation of humility. But what if that loophole enables tax dodgers? Doesn’t the public have the right to know that everything is on the up-and-up?
Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, tried last summer to get Senate Bill 218 passed to open up the books — excluding anonymous donors. The voice of the people, through elected representatives in both state houses, should have been heard loud and clear. The Senate and the Assembly each passed SB 218 and sent it to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk.
CSU and UC lobbyists were instrumental in defeating this piece of legislation, when they convinced Schwarzenegger to wield his veto pen and muffle taxpayers’ cries.
Why the secrecy? The lack of transparency in the CSU has caused enough trouble. The case of Ernst is not the first and surely won’t be the last if the CSU continues to operate in this manner.
Corruption is a cancer caused by lacking mechanisms for oversight. If the CSU books were open to the public, we wouldn’t have to wait three years to find out about corruption like this. Thousands could become university watchdogs and we’d be one step closer to curing institutional corruption in higher education.
The foundation this university system was built upon seems to be crumpling little by little.
Our administrators are slowly turning our universities into miserable little dominions of mediocrity. If they attempt to get rid of the good, we must attempt to get rid of the bad.
Those of us who attend any California system of education are at the doorstep of change. This involves supporting any future legislation that opens access via the CPRA, and campaigning for everything we see as integral to advancing our learning processes.