Yee says college hid e-mail about Palin speech

[n2doc]

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, April 8, 2010

A Bay Area lawmaker who's trying to force disclosure of Sarah Palin's speaking fee for her upcoming $500-a-plate event at a California State University campus said Wednesday he has proof that the school wrongly withheld a document about the event.

The newly uncovered e-mail from a CSU Stanislaus official doesn't reveal how much the former Alaska governor will be paid for her June 25 appearance. But it shows that the university may have violated California's Public Records Act by denying it had any undisclosed Palin-related documents, said state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/08/BA1G1CR8D5.DTL&tsp=1

interesting part-
But Yee said the Stanislaus foundation uses university offices, phones and meeting rooms, is staffed almost entirely by university employees and has the university's president, Hamid Shirvani, as its board chair.

That shows that the foundation is an arm of the university and subject to the same public-records rules, Yee said. And he said a law he sponsored in 2008 requires a public agency to disclose its records despite private confidentiality agreements.

Yee asked the university last week to reveal Palin's fee and other contract terms. An advocacy group, Californians Aware, requested all records related to the event.

The school's compliance officer, Gina Leguria, made the same response Tuesday to both requests: The university has no such documents and is referring the matter to the foundation. The foundation responded Wednesday by citing the confidentiality clause in Palin's contract.

[Initech]

1. How is someone who reads notes off her hand qualified to speak at a university?

[whopis01]

2. Of course she is qualified - she's got a degree from 4 colleges.

And by that, I of course mean that she got a single degree after attending 4 different schools (one of them twice).

[gratuitous]

3. I hate this crapola

The University of Oregon is running the same scam right now. The former Athletic Director, Mike Belotti, is on his way over to ESPN for a college football analyst gig. On his way out the door, the University decided to give him $2.3 million, even though Belotti doesn't have a written contract. Questions have been raised, and the University has decided now that the golden handshake is going to come out of earmarked donor money rather than the school's general fund, so it's really not anybody's business. Except, of course, for us taxpayers who wonder why the University is acting as go-between for Belotti and whoever (coughPhilKnightcough) is pungling up the severance pay.

Sounds like Stanislaus is similarly playing fast and loose with its obligations as a publicly-funded university to hide things away from the prying eyes of the taxpayers.