Andanh.com

Here's your chance.

PS -- I encourage you to scroll back to the item about state takeover of the Decatur schools for a blog reader's comment. He/she is from Decatur and has a strong opinion to offer from long experience.

News first: You'll eventually find below aother striking piece of information about the extraordinary compensation awarded UCA President Lu Hardin.

But I'll begin at the beginning.

The Times this week has a lengthy, but still abbreviated report on the pay of public college presidents and chancellors. Now comes the result of Higher Education Department research for legislators with a fuller accounting of  pay and perks for the top Arkansas academic administrators for fiscal 2009. (None of them comes close to Bobby Petrino's seven-figure take to coach UA football, thank goodness.)

A memo accompanying the spread sheet on pay said no college official was found to be receiving pay greater than 25 percent more than line-item maximums from public funds. Many are receiving "private" supplements, generally from foundations related to the institution each leads.

Highlights:

Dr. Les Wyatt, president of the Arkansas State U. system, is the most highly compensated, at $540,610, just ahead of $538,722 for Dr. Alan Sugg, head of the UA system. Low man on the totem pole is UA-Monticello's Chancellor Jackson Lassiter at $219,024. UALR's chancellor, Joel Anderson, is at $275,473.

And, oh my lordy, here's another round of publicity for poor ol' LuCA.

Though he gave up his $300,000 early deferred comp payout and the Board suspended discussion of an additional $150,000-a-year deferred comp add-on, President Lu Hardin still ranks high in the collegiate stratosphere. Total compensation: $510,667. The breakdown: Pay, $253,774; car, $11,651; house, $27,196; cook, lawn service, building maintenance, utilities, etc., $55,252; deferred comp, $60,000 (this is the figure accruing annually under a deal approved by the Board three years ago); retirement match, $25,377; health insurance, $5,135; life insurance, $1,112; club dues, $11,277; cell phone, $2,893;

AND, ta da, a new and previously unreported perk of fairly sizable significance:

A $57,000 -- FIFTY-SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS -- expense account funded by the UCA Foundation. As we've noted previously, the foundation has been guided by a UCA employee and realizes some of its income from renting space to UCA.

I have questions pending about why Hardin's housing staff expense is computed at a much higher level than others and why he has such a large expense account, plus whether there's a public accounting available. (UPDATED ON JUMP)

Of the 13 university level administrators, only two others have expense accounts -- Robert C. Brown at Arkansas Tech gets $5,188 and Dr. David Rankin at Southern Arkansas University gets $25,000 (?!).

The two-year college bosses generally run from $170,000 to $200,000, with a couple of exceptions. Dr. Glenn Fenter at Mid-South Community College had total compensation of more than $238,000 and Becky Paneitz-Danks, chief of Northwest Arkansas Community College notched a bracket-busting $263,257.

Noted: the survey differs from ours in many ways chiefly because it ascribes a cost to such things as free housing and adds that into the total compensation package, though the expenses -- such as staff -- may be related to fulfilling public functions. These include dinners at presidents' housing and the like.

Thus, the UAF chancellor's total compensation is about $363,000 -- with $282,540 in base pay (including about $54,000 from private funds); $6,600 for a car; $31,000 for the free house; $9,200 for maid and lawn service; $23,000 in retirement match; more than $4,000 for club dues, etc.

Here's the spread sheet on colleges.

Here's the spread sheet on universities.

Read them and weep, or cheer, as you are so inclined.

Higher Ed is at work compiling figures from the two preceding years as well.

You'll love this website, arkansasfreedom.com

The text is tedious, but they have a pretty good cartoonist, even if I don't necessarily share the political point of view. Click here to see it.

Former U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins wrote yesterday that he didn't believe the president, Karl Rove and other high Bush administration officials had anything to do with the run-amuck illegal political hiring in the Justice Department.

Do tell.

From today's NY Times:

On May 17, 2005, the White House’s political affairs office sent an e-mail message to agencies throughout the executive branch directing them to find jobs for 108 people on a list of “priority candidates” who had “loyally served the president.”

“We simply want to place as many of our Bush loyalists as possible,” the White House emphasized in a follow-up message, according to a little-noticed passage of a Justice Department report released Monday about politicization in the department’s hiring of civil-service prosecutors and immigration officials.

It gets better (worse). It mentions, too, why this is one reason Karl Rove doesn't want to testify to Congress.

The Arkansas Republican Party's next fund-raiser for the 2008 get out the vote effort is being styled as a "Welcome Home Governor Huckabee" event.

For $10,000, you can get some private face time with The Huckster in style befitting a Rockefeller. (And no telling what he might be willing to work out as a side deal.)

A federal judge rules White House aides must answer congressional subpoenas and produce non-privileged documents. Implications for K-k-k-Karl?

Please note that the judge is John Bates, a Federalist Society-approved Republican appointee and former right-hand hatchet man to Whitewater Persecutor Kenneth Starr. Not exactly a leftist patsy.

Count me unshocked. Environmental groups weren't consulted before the Game and Fish Commission entered an agreement to lease wildlife management areas for gas drilling.

Where's the water to come from to "frac" these wells -- something like 3 million gallons for each of dozens of wells? Where's the waste to go? Who'll be watching for pollution from drilling chemicals? Does it matter as long as the money rolls in?

Questions for another day.

Just remember, when a gas company like Chesapeake pays $29 million to get gas, it expects to get the gas. Even if it means condemning somebody's front yard.

UPDATE: Gov. Beebe is quoted in the linked article as saying he thought the public had adequate input into the deal. His spokesman tells me that’s a reference to discussions of gas leasing at Game and Fish Commission meetings. Wildlife Federation must have been absent from those sessions, I guess. Spokesman Matt DeCample also said Beebe had not been involved in the negotiations, but became aware of them close to the end. He said the governor remained hopeful that some of the money would go to state agencies that regulate gas exploration and that he took assurance of good operations from the best management agreement struck between Game and Fish and Chesapeake.

Does the governor’s acquiescence mean he signs off on the notion that Game and Fish is exempt from the statute that requires the state land commissioner to oversee mineral leasing of public lands and deposit revenues into the general fund? DeCample said he'd defer an opinion on that to the attorney general, who mealy-mouthed the other day that Game and Fish appears to be a power unto itself in the Arkansas firmament. Since the lawyer-governor did NOT object to Game and Fish annexing all the loot, you can draw your own conclusions, of course.

Seven-plus years in, Arkansas has a Task Force for the 21st Century Economy. It issued an interim report today. Lots of words.

Scanning for nuggets, I find suggestions about: 1) Merging or at least "co-locating" some state agencies with related functions -- Economic Developemtn, Development Finance, Science and Technology Authority, etc.;  2) Changing the law to allow public money to be used for venture capital (count me very nervous about that one). I presume investment bankers would find a way to score a fee for managing this money without assuming any risk; 3) Much more money for economic development, naturally. Because we all know so-called free enterprise can't succeed without public subsidies; 4) Better physical infrastructure, from roads to communications networks. The peons, naturally, would pay for this so that the free-enterprise, free-market entrepreneurs who make this country great will have higher profit margins and perhaps trickle down a little underpaid, non-union work on the rest of us; 5) letting cities get into venture capital (be still my heart) 6) broadening taxes that can be tapped for Tax Increment Finance Districts (in other words, try again to change the law so that sporting good store developers can steal school tax money to build shopping centers and maybe let them annex local sales taxes, too); 7) And, oh, by the way, more rigorous and productive education, geared to knowledge-based businesses.

A woman might say, with an encyclopedia's worth of inflection: "Men ...."

A while back, I mentioned a New York Times article about a Phoenix country club dispute over the club's refusal to admit women to its grill.

A male club member quoted as favoring a change in the policy has been expelled from membership for "violating club etiquette" by expressing that opinion.

Boys will be boys, I guess. Call me out of step, but I've never understood the appeal of men-only clubs, organizations, activities.