How UC President Napolitano undermined the state audit

George Blumenthal, chancellor of UC Santa Cruz, was driving to work a year ago when he received a call from Janet Napolitano, president of the 10-campus university system.

She was “furious,” Blumenthal later recalled.

The state auditor was surveying the campuses to see if officials were satisfied with services provided by Napolitano’s office. Following survey instructions, UCSC officials had sent their answers directly back to the auditor.

But Napolitano, who had previously described the survey as a “witch hunt,” had insisted that her office first screen each campus’s answers. UCSC had failed to comply.

Napolitano told Blumenthal that the submission “is going to be very damaging to the university.” When he asked her what she wanted him to do about it, Napolitano responded, “Well, withdraw it, you can withdraw it.” So that’s what he did. The interchange is contained in a scathing investigation report, commissioned by University of California regents and conducted by a teamof lawyers led by former state Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno.

The team interviewed 38 witnesses and reviewed 427,000 pieces of data and documents. The report, released last week, shows how Napolitano and two of her top officials systematically undermined a state audit of her office’s performance.

It documents how campus chancellors, warned personally by Napolitano, self-censored answers to the state auditor. And how, when that wasn’t good enough, Napolitano’s top staffers insisted on more changes to remove negative comments.

It’s unconscionable. Yet, regents have let Napolitano off with just a reprimand and a demand that she apologize. They should have fired her. They still should.

Her interference with the audit shows that Napolitano, former Arizona governor and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, has no respect for California government oversight that comes with running one of the world’s leading public university systems.

UC receives $3 billion annually in state funds and legislators have a responsibility to ensure that taxpayer money is wisely spent. Because of growing concern about the university system’s finances, legislators directed state Auditor Elaine Howle to conduct a review.

In her findings, released in April, Howle determined that the UC Office of the President was sitting on $175 million of undisclosed reserves, used misleading budgeting practices, gave employees overly generous salaries and failed to satisfactorily justify its spending on systemwide initiatives.

Howle also tried to determine whether officials at the 10 campuses thought the quality and cost of the services Napolitano’s office provided were reasonable. But she threw out the survey results after learning that Napolitano had interfered.

The Moreno investigation details that interference.

When Napolitano learned about the audit, on Oct. 21, 2016, in a text fromher chief of staff, Seth Grossman, she texted back, “As we know, this is a witch hunt.”

In a Nov. 10 staff meeting, in which Napolitano was swearing and “very upset” about the auditors, she approved the plan to prescreen the survey results before they went to Howle.

And at a Nov. 15 dinner, Napolitano told the campus chan- cellors that the survey was politicallymotivated, that they were to review the responses drafted by their staff and that her staff was then to review them before they were turned in.

One chancellor recalled that Napolitano warned the group that toomuch negativity in the audit would reflect badly on her office and the campuses.

Meanwhile, the day before, Grossman and Deputy Chief of Staff Bernie Jones held a conference call with the chancellors’ associates and chiefs of staff.

Three witnesses said they were cautioned that the surveys were not the place to air “dirty laundry.” Grossman and Jones, who resigned just before the report’s release, denied making that comment.

Napolitano said if she had known about the “dirty laundry” comment, “she would have stopped it.” But that’s essentially what she said to Blumenthal, the UC Santa Cruz chancellor, when she told him on Nov. 22 to withdraw the damaging survey response.

Napolitano denied Blumenthal’s account that she was angry; she said the conversation was “matter of fact.” But she acknowledged that she “probably” suggested he withdraw the survey.

Even if one believes her account, which is hard given the totality of the evidence about her behavior in the Moreno report, the facts are clear: Napolitano tried to control responses to the state auditor survey about her own office’s performance.

That sort of interference cannot be tolerated by any public official. Napolitano needs to go.