The University of California received an average grade of “F” on a recent transparency audit performed by Californians Aware, a state government watchdog group. The audit measured each of the 10 campuses compliance with California Public Records Act requests. However, Steve Montiel, media relations representative for the UC Office of the President, questioned the accuracy of Californians Aware’s methods and stated, “We believe the report is deeply flawed. You have to question the validity and fairness of any report that characterizes an entity’s [California Public Records Act] compliance as a failure despite the release of records in accordance with the law. … The report does not reflect the hard work that employees across the UC system do to ensure transparency.”
Read the full story: http://www.dailycal.org/article/111996/california_
UC Regent Live(blog) 
UC Berkeley’s Financial Adversity Spawns Positive Innovation, Huge Mistakes. (The author who has 35 years’ consulting experience, has taught at University of California Berkeley, where he was able to observe the culture & the way senior management work)
University of California Berkeley (Cal) Chancellor’s huge mistakes: recruits (using California tax $) out of state $50,000 tuition students that displace qualified Californians from public university; spends $7,000,000 + for consultants to do his & many vice chancellors jobs (prominent East Coast university accomplishing same at 0 cost); pays ex Michigan governor $300,000 for lectures; Latino enrollment drops while out of state jumps 2010; tuition to Return on Investment (ROI) drops below top 10; NCAA places basketball program on probation: absence institutional control.
Chancellor Birgeneau’s ($500,000 salary) fiscal track record is dismal indeed. He would like to blame the politicians, since they stopped giving him every dollar asked for, & the state legislators do share some responsibility for the financial crisis. But not in the sense he means.
A competent chancellor would have been on top of identifying inefficiencies & then crafting a plan to fix them. Able oversight by the UC Board of Regents & the legislature would have required him to provide data on inefficiencies & on what steps he was taking to solve them during his 8 year reign. Instead, every year Birgeneau would request a budget increase, the timid president, regents would agree to it, and the legislature would provide. The hard questions were avoided by all concerned, & the problems just piled up to $150 million of inefficiencies….until there was no money left.
It’s not that Birgeneau was unaware that there were, in fact, waste & inefficiencies during his 8 year reign. Faculty & staff raised issues with Birgeneau & Provost Breslauer ($400,000 salary), but when they failed to see relevant action taken, they stopped. Finally, Birgeneau engaged expensive ($7,000,000 +) consultants to tell him & the Provost what they should have known as leaders or been able to find out from the bright, engaged people. (Prominent east-coast University accomplishing same at 0 costs)
We are sympathetic to the frustration of UC Chancellors running their campuses with declining support from the state. Cal. has been badly damaged by Birgeneau. Good people are loosing their jobs. Cal’s leadership is either incompetent or culpable. Merely cutting out inefficiencies does not have the effect desired.
But you never want a crisis to go to waste. Increasing Cal’s budget is not enough; we believe the best course of action for UC is to honorably replace Cal. Chancellor Birgeneau