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Examiner reporter Lance Williams continues to astound us with ever more alarming details of UC Regent/financier/George W. Bush front man Gerald Parsky's levering of UC pension funds from the oversight of UC Treasurer Patricia Small to that of his fellow Republican financier Dennis Tito, who just happened to have decided to funnel $100,000 through a legal loophole into the Republican campaign chest in several separate payments ("More GOP donations preceded UC contract," Metro section, Aug. 13). According to Williams, two of Tito's payments, for $15,000 and $5,000, landed in GOP coffers on May 12 and May 17. On May 18 Parsky pulled the regental lever that delivered a lucrative $350,000 no-bid contract to the GOP-donor friend's office at Wilshire Associates.
Within 24 hours of Tito's GOP donations, the entire UC pension fund structure was effectively privatized, by regents' fiat. Although professional and political relationships of Parsky and Tito are close, none of this warrants alarm according to the UC spokespersons quoted by Williams in his investigative reporting of Parsky's deal. In fact, according to UC damage-control expert Michael Reese, all aspects of this matter were conducted in a manner consistent with university practices and in the best interests of the university, its employees and its pension funds.
This at least demonstrates that UC public relations statements can sometimes tell a half-truth. Parsky's privatizing raid on UC pension funds is indeed consistent with university practices, as is subsequent regental rhetoric explaining the unimaginable in terms of the inexplicable. It is unimaginable that Treasurer Small's handling of the pension so successfully that no UC employee has had to contribute to it in human memory should earn her ouster in a Parsky-prodded palace coup.
It is inexplicable that within days of their corporate beneficiary's GOP contributions the regents should awaken at Parsky's magic kiss to the conviction that they had been shirking their oversight duty for decades and, thus, convulsively privatize UC's $59 billion-plus pension fund in less time than it takes to decide on the purchase of a second car. Even more consistent with UC practices was the regental campaign to minimize the size and number of Tito's installment payments to the GOP war chest until Williams dragged the facts into the light. We should be grateful, perhaps, if a UC hack can speak at least a half-truth. For full disclosure we must turn to investigative reporters like The Examiner's Williams. At this point UC's apologia possesses a credibility content of zero.
Jonathan C. Petty
Coalition of University Employees
Berkeley