One year ago this week, UC divulged total compensation — base pay and other compensation — for the university's highest paid employees.

This year, UC is making that data available again — along with the compensation data for every other UC employee.

That means making public the payroll records for more than 233,000 people, including full- and part-time staff, even students who work for the university.

"While we are aware that some employees may regard this as an intrusion of their privacy, please remember that you are public employees working for a public institution — and as such, your compensation, under the California Public Records Act, is considered a public record," Board of Regents Chair Gerald Parsky said in a Nov. 8 e-mail to the UC community.

"Many other public institutions follow this practice as a matter of course, and it is the view of the regents that the University of California must follow suit."

The university's push toward more transparency on compensation began a year ago in the wake of the San Francisco Chronicle's coverage of UC executives' total compensation: base pay and compensation over and above base pay.

The newspaper reported that when UC appoints new administrators, it "normally only reports the base salary — excluding moving stipends, housing allowances, car allowances and other forms of pay."

So the Chronicle asked for the university's 2004-05 payroll records, filing the request under the state Public Records Act.

Then, on Nov. 13, 2005, the newspaper reported: "In addition to salaries and overtime, payroll records … show that employees received a total of $871 million in bonuses, administrative stipends, relocation packages and other forms of cash compensation last fiscal year."

The university responded then, and Parsky, in his e-mail last week, reiterated the university's position: "A detailed analysis of the payroll data showed that the majority of this 'above base pay' went to health sciences faculty for treating patients or conducting research, and to campus faculty for additional teaching and research they do during the summer.

"The analysis also showed that above base pay paid to senior managers was less than 1 percent of the total."

Parsky's e-mail acknowledged the "extensive external, internal and state audits" that led to the university's discovery of "cases of inappropriate pay that were either exceptions to university policy or not properly approved by the Board of Regents."

He continued: "The university has responded aggressively by implementing new approval requirements for exceptions to policy, and the regents have adopted new policies for public disclosure of compensation information, open-session committee votes of the regents on compensation items, new policy compliance mechanisms and oversight positions at the Office of the President, and new requirements governing employee agreements, among other things.

"We have further reported total compensation for those positions approved by the regents, and have committed to full annual reporting of total compensation for the entire senior leadership group."

The senior management compensation data, covering 318 employees, went online on Nov. 8. Compensation data for all employees was to become available in paper form at university libraries on Nov. 14; at UC Davis, the material is in the reserves at Shields Library.

The paper copy includes each employee's name, campus, title, base pay, overtime pay and gross pay, a university spokesman said.

The university, Parsky said, is once again analyzing its payroll data for the year. A complete review of 2005-06 data will not be final until mid-December, he said, but a preliminary report is online.

The report shows "above base pay" totaling $916 million in 2005-06 and declares that "above base pay" to senior managers, while "slightly" higher than the previous year, "still represents less than 1 percent" of the total.

Parsky shared some of the report's "bigger elements":

• Like last year, the vast majority of "above base pay" for 2005-06 (nearly 80 percent) went to employees in academic occupations — professors, clinical professors, other teaching faculty, research titles, and a variety of other academic titles — and nearly 50 percent of the funding for this compensation came from medical compensation plans and other activities associated with UC's teaching hospitals.
• "Above base pay" for UC senior managers remained essentially flat in 2005-06.
• UC continues to implement reforms to compensation programs to provide for policy compliance and appropriate public disclosure.

Parsky concluded his e-mail by underscoring "two very important points about this information":

• First, the vast majority of the issues identified by the audit and task force findings concerned lack of compliance with internal approval and reporting protocols, not excessive compensation. Indeed, Parsky said that many of the findings confirm UC's need to pay competitive compensation and benefits and acknowledge that compensation levels for many employee groups continue to lag the market, significantly so in many cases.
• Second, there is nothing inherently inappropriate suggested by the growth in payroll generally and the amounts of "above base pay" specifically. Parsky said there are appropriate and legitimate reasons why UC's payroll has grown. Moreover, he said, UC should and hopefully will see increases in its payroll from one year to the next as it continues to grow, in order to better serve more California students and teaching hospital patients.

More information on UC compensation, including the senior management data for 2005-06, is available at www.ucop.edu (click on "Updates on UC compensation").