What's the big deal about Bill Hauck?
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CFA believes CSU Trustee Bill Hauck has a conflict of interest while carrying out his duties as chief lobbyist and president of the California Business Roundtable serving corporations and looking out for the best interest of the California State University as its most influential Trustee.
CFA has taken up this issue with Assemblymember Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles), who will present it to the Joint Legislative Audit Committee for further investigation.
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More than 250 CSU faculty, staff and students rallied outside Bill Hauck's downtown Sacramento office building May 3 to deliver him with a failing grade for serving the best interests of the CSU. See full report.
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In question is Hauck's job at the California Business Roundtable that pays him more than $300,000 a year to lobby legislators to make budget cuts to public education, such as the CSU, and to raise student fees. As a Trustee he has a responsibility to seek what's in the best interest of the university.
CFA contends that raising fees and cutting the university's budget does not benefit the CSU.
See the story at http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/living/education/14488578.html
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CFA members believe Hauck's and the California Business Roundtable's pro-business, anti-tax agenda is quickly becoming the CSU's agenda.
Here is a list of how Hauck has violated our trust in him in his role as CSU Trustee:
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1. SUPPORTED EXEC PAY HIKE
CSU Trustee Bill Hauck, chair of the Trustees' finance committee, brought a proposal to increase by 13.7% the top CSU executives' salaries and perks to a board vote, which overwhelmingly passed. This, during a time when the faculty received a meager cost-of-living raise after getting nothing for two years and when student fees have gone up 76% in three years.
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2. INSTITUTED FLAT TAX ON STUDENTS
Hauck initiated plans to raise student fees and helped approve cumulative fee increases of 76% in the last three years. He has proposed to continue to raise fees 10 percent a year until 2010. All this goes against the mission of the CSU and the state's Master Plan for Higher Education because it reduces access to the CSU
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3. MOVED TO ELIMINATE FERP
Hauck, president and chief lobbyist of the California Business Roundtable, proposes to eliminate the Faculty Early Retirement Program (FERP) for the successor Unit 3 contract. This is a program, mind you, that SAVES the CSU money. So why does he want this? CFA believes it is to assert managerial control.
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4. BACKED PROP. 76
Hauck, in the governor's Nov. 8, 2005 Special Election, engineered a measure that would have cut the budgets of state institutions, leaving the CSU deeply vulnerable to even less funding than it gets now.
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5. WOULD ELIMINATE TENURE & COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
Hauck, being a lobbyist for big business, would like to curtail workers' rights. In an editorial board meeting last year with the San Francisco Chronicle he revealed that "in an ideal world" he would like to see an end to tenure and collective bargaining for teachers.
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