Cal State Stanislaus releases Palin contract
(08-26) 21:45 PDT TURLOCK -- The contract authorizing a $75,000 payment to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for a speaking engagement at Cal State Stanislaus was made public Thursday after a judge ordered the college to produce the document.
The contract, which details everything from the type of vehicle Palin should be chauffeured in to the type of straws to place at the lectern, became a big deal when the CSU Stanislaus Foundation refused to release it or reveal how much Palin was paid to speak at the June 25 fundraiser.
<< Read the contract for Palin's speech (PDF) >>
State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, who has been trying to change a state law that shields campus foundations from public scrutiny, claimed the college administration and foundation board were virtually the same and were therefore illegally hiding important information from the public. He said Thursday the entire college administration should be fired for hiding the information.
"It was never about Sarah Palin," Yee said. "It was about how foundations do business and the cozy relationships they have with public university administrations."
The released contract revealed little that wasn't already known. The college had previously released Palin's pay after it became known that university officials had played a role in managing the foundation's money.
The contract also confirmed that Palin expected to be flown first class to her destination, be put up in a "deluxe" hotel - in this case the Doubletree Hotel in Modesto - and be driven around in an SUV or, if that was unavailable, a black town car. The contract also specified that she was to have two bottled waters and bendable straws placed on a well-lit wooden lectern where she was to speak.
Most of this was first revealed after students discovered discarded pieces of the secret contract in a trash container on university grounds. That was after university officials told Yee and CalAware, an open-government group, that they didn't have any Palin-related documents.
The ensuing lawsuit by CalAware forced the release of hundreds of pages of Palin-related paperwork from the university - but not the contract. Among them were e-mails showing that Charles Reed, chancellor of the 23-campus California State University system, favored suppressing the contract to avoid news stories about its contents.
That e-mail, and the finding that the university did possess Palin documents, led Stanislaus Superior Court Judge Roger Beauchesne on Monday to order the Turlock campus to release Palin's contract.
Critics have long complained that university foundations have been used like secret checking accounts, allowing officials to spend lavishly and escape public scrutiny. That point was driven home, Yee said, by the fact that the Palin contract was signed by Susana Gajic-Bruyea, who is both the vice president for university advancement at Cal State Stanislaus and the executive officer of the CSU Stanislaus Foundation board.
"The contract just gives more ammunition and more evidence to the general perception that we initially had - that the foundation and administration are literally one and the same," Yee said.
This article appeared on page C - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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