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By Phillip Carter

Daily Bruin Staff

SAN FRANCISCO -- In the best financial year for the UC system since 1990, the University of California Board of Regents voted last week to give its top administrators a "modest" pay raise.

The raises included UC President Richard Atkinson, who received a 4 percent increase to $253,300 a year, and 15 UCLA administrators whose salaries rose by an average of 4.6 percent.

Among these was Chancellor Charles Young, whose pay jumped 5 percent from $212,100 to $222,700 - an increase of $10,600. Young makes more than any chancellor except that of UC Berkeley, whose salary is fixed at the same amount by the regents.

The pay raise comes on the heels of what Atkinson described as a "very healthy" financial year for the UC. Under an agreement with Gov. Pete Wilson, the UC system received more funds from California than it had since 1990, though state money still makes up just 24 percent of the statewide UC budget.

Originally, the agreement with Wilson called for a student-fee increase to be implemented each year to help the UC system catch up in salaries for faculty and administrators.

But with an extra $1.2 billion flowing into state coffers this year, Wilson reneged on that part of the bargain and offered to give the UC system enough money to do without the fee increase.

Consequently, the raise met with little resistance from the Board of Regents, with the exception of Student Regent Jess Bravin of UC Berkeley, who decried the move as "unwise" given the other pressing needs on campuses.

"It's not prudent fiscal management for the University of California ... I don't think that's just the right way of going about spending our public's money," Bravin said, noting that the university could fund 160 full scholarships per year with the $680,000 combined administrative raise.

"Up and down the line this was a bad decision. It's the second year in a row that they have gotten a raise," Bravin added.

One other regent, Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, expressed opposition to the pay raise for UC Davis Medical Center Director Frank Loge, who received a $36,400 merit and equity increase in his pay, despite a poor financial year for his hospital at UC Davis.

Nonetheless, Davis voted in favor of the salary increases.

UC senior officials will receive the same average increases as the staff based on performance.

While not included in last week's Board of Regents vote, UC faculty and staff also received a pay raise ranging from 4 to 7 percent. That raise was built into the 1996-97 UC budget, and will be automatically distributed.

Under UC Board of Regents Bylaws, pay raises for officials who make more than $153,000 must be approved by the board. The regents approved a similar item last September.

In voting for the item, several regents cited recent studies of salaries at other colleges and universities, and the need to stay even with those pay levels in order to attract and keep good faculty and staff to UC.

As of July 1, 1996, UC officials said that chancellors' salaries lagged behind the salaries for comparable university or college presidents by 9.5 percent to 22.5 percent; UC administrators' pay lagged behind the market by approximately 18.4 percent.