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Editor's note: This is first in a three part series about compensation and salaries at UCLA. Part two will run Tuesday.

For months, executive compensation has been the phrase on the minds of the University of California’s leaders and on the lips of lawmakers.

Criticism of the UC’s compensation policy surfaced in November, after a series of newspaper articles raised concerns about executive bonuses. The issue culminated in two state senate hearings this month, in which legislators rebuked UC President Robert Dynes for lax enforcement of the system’s payment policies.

A Daily Bruin review of salary documents obtained through the California Public Records Act found that in the past three years, UCLA’s payroll did not contain the kind of questionable payouts to highly paid administrators occurring elsewhere within the UC which caught the attention of senators.

But the situation is still complex. While top administrators have not received big pay raises in the past two years, some have gotten financial perks and at least one has received extra pay for reasons UCLA officials have difficulty explaining with precision. And even with the perks and bonuses some administrators receive, they are not UCLA’s highest-paid employees – that distinction belongs to the university’s doctors.

Transparency worries

Though compensation, or total pay, for the UC’s top-paid people is under scrutiny, much of the recent criticism by state senators has been directed at nonsalary elements of compensation. Bonuses and paid-leave packages – such as the $302,000, 15-month package approved for MRC Greenwood, former UC provost, after she resigned while facing a conflict of interest inquiry in November – have been the hottest topics.

When budget cuts forced the UC to raise funds by increasing student fees and tuition in recent years, UC and UCLA officials said executive salaries, like the salaries of most university employees, stayed put. Increased executive salaries were going mostly to new recruits, they said.

Data from payroll records confirms that these statements accurately reflected the situation at UCLA: Most top UCLA administrators have not gotten substantial raises in the past two years, and the salaries of top-paid administrators at UCLA actually fell behind inflation during that time.

In 2004, no administrator who earned a base salary of $200,000 or more got a pay raise higher than $1,500, and only Frances Ridlehoover – who was chief operating officer for the UCLA Medical Center in 2005 and has since left the university – got a pay raise in 2005.

To stay even with inflation, a salary of $200,000 would have had to increase by $4,600 in 2004, and $5,400 in 2005.

Like state senators, some UCLA faculty members are less concerned about the salaries of the university’s leaders than they are about knowing what policies govern the total compensation of those individuals.

Some worries about a lack of transparency stem from the fact that policies governing compensation are often complex and can leave room for interpretation, said Adrienne Lavine, chairwoman of the UCLA Academic Senate.

“It is difficult to wade through what is written (in policy documents) and see what is there,” Lavine said. “Transparency is really important so that we don’t get into a situation where something is revealed and it’s a surprise.”

Additional money for administrators

Though the salaries of UCLA’s top administrators have not climbed much during the past two years, some of the university’s leaders receive other forms of payment.

Three of the 22 administrators with base salaries of $200,000 or more received stipends in 2005, payroll records show.

Stipends are sums of money given for temporarily assuming the duties of a higher official, according to UC policy.

When asked what additional duties UCLA officials receiving stipends had taken on, UCLA representatives said the university sometimes uses criteria for stipends that are different from those used by the UC Office of the President.

Athletic Director Dan Guerrero, for example, was given a $50,000 stipend each year from 2003 to 2005.

His stipends were given for meeting specific performance goals rather than taking on extra responsibilities.

Guerrero receives a stipend when the chancellor decides that “reasonable progress” has been made to improve the graduation rates of student-athletes, and when UCLA finishes in the top 10 percent of Division I schools in the NCAA Directors’ Cup, according to Carol Stogsdill, a UCLA spokeswoman.

The Directors’ Cup is a program designed to honor schools for achievements in a broad range of sports. UCLA came in third in the 2005 competition.

Bruce Willison, former dean of the Anderson School of Management, received a stipend of $32,300 in 2005.

Willison received the stipend because he was planning to step down from his post, but Chancellor Albert Carnesale convinced him to stay and approved the stipend as an incentive for Willison to stay in the position until a replacement could be found, Stogsdill said.

Fawzy Fawzy, former medical director of the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and hospital, received a stipend of $3,795 per year from 2003 to 2005.

It was not clear what Fawzy, an administrator, did on top of his job description to merit an administrative stipend.

“If you’re a chair, a vice chair, a director or a dean” you qualify for a stipend, said Dale Tate, a UCLA spokeswoman, referring to Fawzy’s stipend.

“It’s generally perceived” that such stipends help to further compensate for additional administrative responsibilities, Tate said. She did not elaborate.

Twenty-five professors who earned base salaries of $200,000 or more also received stipends in 2005. More than half of these were department chairs or directors.

Merit bonuses

The largest bonuses handed out between 2003 and 2005 were performance awards, which are monetary bonuses given to recognize merit.

Several of these went to four medical school administrators in consecutive years.

James McCoy, who was chief compliance officer for the UCLA Medical Center from 2003 to 2005 and has since retired, received performance awards of more than $30,000 in 2003, 2004 and 2005. Ridlehoover got a performance award of at least $29,000 in each of these three years as well. Sergio Melgar, who was chief financial officer for the UCLA Medical Center in 2003 and 2004, was awarded $43,347 in 2003 and $31,209 in 2004. Heidi Crooks, chief patient care services officer for the UCLA Medical Center, was given a $31,178 award in 2003 and another for $17,055 in 2005.

A total of 24 performance awards were given to people earning base salaries of $200,000 or more between 2003 and 2005. More than half of these monetary awards, which ranged from $17,055 to $63,198, went to medical center administrators. Most of the remaining performance awards were for less than $5,000 each.

The awards were not restricted to medical center administrators, and the individuals who received them several years in a row were doing work that merited special recognition each year, Tate said. She did not provide specific examples.

Performance awards for medical school administrators are approved by President Dynes and reviewed by the regents, said Noel Van Nyhuis, a UC spokesman.

Automobile allowances

One of the financial benefits of being a top administrator at UCLA is the university’s auto allowance policy.

The chancellor, five vice chancellors and Guerrero receive yearly car allowances.

Five of these individuals received UC standard car allowances of $8,916 in 2005. David Callender, associate vice chancellor of the hospital system and CEO of the UCLA Medical Center, was given $8,681 in 2005, while Guerrero got $16,822.

Though the dollar amount listed as Guerrero’s auto allowance is twice as large as any other administrator’s, he does not receive it as a monetary allowance like others do. Rather, he is assigned two cars donated by local dealers for his use, and the allowance listed on payroll records represents the value attributed to those cars, Stogsdill said. The dealers receive sponsorship benefits such as tickets and program ads in exchange for their donations, so the money does not come from state funds or student fees, and Guerrero pays income tax on the cars’ value, she said.

Carnesale drives a 1997 Toyota Avalon, which he purchased when he came to UCLA. University policy does not require recipients of auto allowances to spend them, and Carnesale has received an auto allowance every year he has been at UCLA.

Who’s on top: doctors

Despite the perks some university executives receive, almost all of UCLA’s highest-paid employees are doctors.

University doctors, also referred to as clinical faculty, account for 87 of the 123 UCLA employees who earned base salaries of $200,000 or more in 2005, according to payroll documents.

UCLA clinical faculty members often earn much more than their base salaries suggest because of the medical compensation system, which entitles them to a portion of the money they bring into the university through performing procedures, seeing patients or obtaining research grants.

Medical compensation can be paltry for some physicians, but it can eclipse the base salaries of others.

Philip Larson, an anesthesiologist who had the seventh-highest base salary at UCLA in 2005, made a modest $1,111 in medical compensation in 2005, while Dieter Enzmann, the chairman of the radiology department, made $510,975 on top of his $208,574 salary.

In total, the UC system paid out $449 million in medical compensation in 2005. Most of this money was generated by the physicians themselves through clinical practice or research grants, according to a Web page on compensation put together by the UC Office of the President.

The medical compensation system brings the salaries of university doctors near to those of their counterparts in the private sector.

A 2005 salary survey by the American Medical Group Association showed that compensation for physicians at academic institutions nationwide was slightly lower than their counterparts in the private sector.

For some specialties, median compensation for clinical faculty was the same as in the private sector, but for others the salary gap could be as much as $20,000 or more.

It is normal for clinical faculty to be among the highest-paid university employees, said Doug Kinsella, a research associate for the American Association of University Professors.

The association leaves clinical faculty out of its annual salary survey specifically for this reason, because they would likely skew the results, Kinsella said.

At UCLA, paying such compensation allows the UCLA Medical Center to compete with the best hospitals in the country, Tate said.

“We compare ourselves not to what’s going on here in L.A. or in California, but to the Mayo Clinic; to Johns Hopkins; to (Massachusetts) General. Those are the people who we’re competing with,” she said.

The UC’s Web site on compensation can be found at www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/compensation.