NU pay plan diminishes accountability

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The proposal to boost salaries of top administrators at the University of Nebraska with private donations opens the door for influence to be applied in shadowy, unknown ways.

It’s the wrong way to solve a real problem.

Governance of NU should remain in the hands of the public — both in reality and in perception.

The need for NU’s top leaders to avoid the appearance that unseen powers are pulling the strings is especially important at a time when the Lincoln campus is undertaking an ambitious new public-private partnership in Innovation Park at the current State Fair Park.

The regents should scrap the proposal. At the very least, they should give the public adequate time to weigh in on this important issue, rather than voting as scheduled only a day after the plan was unveiled.

Apparently recognizing that they are moving in a dangerous direction, the regents have tried to minimize the possibility of improper influence by specifying that only “unrestricted” funds would be used to pay portions of administrator salaries.

That protection is not enough.

The funds would be coming from the NU Foundation, which by law has no obligation to be open to public scrutiny or public comment on its operations.

An old saying seems to apply here: Those with the gold get to make the rules.

Under the proposal, private donors would be paying for 12.2 percent of NU President J.B. Milliken’s salary and 8.8 percent of UNL Chancellor Harvey Perlman’s salary. Private donors would be paying 12.8 percent of UNL Medical Center Chancellor Harold Maurer's salary, 4 percent of UNK Chancellor Doug Kristensen’s salary and 2.1 percent of UNO Chancellor John Christensen’s salary.

The regents point out that private money pays for professorships, research and all sorts of university functions.

But governance of the university is different.

NU belongs to the people of the state. The regents’ pay proposal is a step toward privatizing the university without the consent of the public. It’s bad enough that private donors already cover the cost of such things as the housing allowance given to administrators as part of their compensation package.

The regents point out that other public universities also subsidize administrator salaries with private funds. But the argument that others are doing something never justifies unwise action.

The problem the regents are struggling to address is genuine. To hire top-notch administrators, NU must compete on a national level, and by any standard NU administrators lag their peers by wide margins.

For example, using the same peer group used for professors, Milliken’s base salary of $307,227 is $89,703 lower than his peers. Perlman’s salary of $266,136 puts him $54,893 behind his peers.

In a competitive marketplace, those salaries are simply inadequate.

The right way to bring those salaries into line is to use public funds, rather than resorting to private sources and diminishing public accountability. The regents have a strong case to make to taxpayers on why substantial raises are necessary. That’s precisely what they should do. They were elected to make tough decisions — not devise a path of less resistance.