UC President's Housing Raises Ire and Expense
Housing for Mark G. Yudof has cost the university thousands of dollars and considerable acrimony
Five minutes before midnight on June 30, movers hauled the last boxes from a spectacular rented home in the Oakland Hills. The tenant's lease was about to expire, and in his haste to get out, he left behind thousands of dollars of damage to the hardwood floors and Venetian plastered walls.
The tenant was Mark G. Yudof, president of the University of California. His midnight move was the latest chapter in a two-year housing drama that has cost the university more than $600,000 and has drawn senior U.C. officials into an increasingly time-consuming and acrimonious ordeal over the president's private residence.
The effort to resolve Yudof's housing problems has taken place while the U.C., the nation's largest and most prestigious public university system, struggles with one of the worst financial crises in its history, including layoffs, student protests and tuition increases.
After six years as chancellor at the University of Texas, Yudof arrived here in 2008, vowing to bring fiscal responsibility to the 10-campus U.C. system. He chose not to live at university-owned Blake House, the traditional presidential mansion, which the university estimates requires $10 million of renovations and repairs.
Instead, Yudof, 65, moved with his wife into a 10,000-square-foot, four-story house with 16 rooms, 8 bathrooms and panoramic views. He said he needed the house, which rented for $13,365 a month by the end of the lease and was paid for by U.C., to fulfill his obligation to host functions for staff members, donors and visiting dignitaries.
Yudof held 23 such functions over a two-year period, according to the university. He also ordered a list of improvements and repairs -- including air conditioning and 12 phones -- that drove up costs and, according to staff members, tied up university officials in meetings and lengthy negotiations on issues ranging from water bills to gopher eradication.
After the Yudofs vacated the property at the end of June, Brennan Mulligan, the landlord, informed university officials that he intended to keep the U.C.'s $32,100 security deposit. Mulligan requested an additional $45,000 to cover the repairs for hundreds of holes left from hanging art, a scratched marble bathtub, a broken $2,000 Sivoia window shade and other claims.
“At some point, I got a call from the general counsel, and I'm like, 'Why am I talking to the general counsel?'” said Mulligan, 40, a boyish Hong Kong-based business consultant and a U.C. Berkeley graduate who bought the Oakland house in 2003 after selling his bike-messenger bag company, Timbuk2.
“To me it's like, 'Is this how they spend their time?'"Mulligan said.
Among Mulligan's list of complaints was the university's failure to respond to a May 2010 notification from the East Bay Municipal Utility District that the district suspected a water leak on the property. By the time the leak was discovered, shortly after Yudof moved, the house's bimonthly water bill had spiked to nearly $5,000 and 1.2 million gallons of water had trickled into the Oakland Hills, according to copies of the bills.
“It took the plumber 10 minutes to find the leak, literally 10 minutes,” Mulligan said at an evening interview at the house, the lights of San Francisco visible beyond the glass façade of the living room. “There was a broken pipe and a pool of water and I was just like, 'Wow, this looks like that oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. It's just coming out.'”
Yudof said he was unaware of the leak.
On Aug. 5, Yudof's aides presented Mulligan with a settlement agreement that would allow him to keep the security deposit and receive an additional $19,759.05. The university presented the written agreement to Mulligan on the same day The Bay Citizen filed a public-records request for information about the university's expenditures on the house.
On Aug. 8, Yudof killed the deal.
He said he had been aware of the university's discussions with Mulligan but balked at the settlement when he learned about the “outrageous and ridiculous” terms. He said his decision was unrelated to the public-records request.
“I thought it was totally inappropriate what they were doing,” Yudof said of his staff. “I don't have to sign a settlement proposal drafted by the staff on this or any other matter. And I didn't.”
In an interview last week, Yudof attributed the housing problems and higher-than-expected costs to Mulligan, whom he described as “the landlord from hell.”
He said Mulligan was often unresponsive to maintenance requests, and in one instance missed a payment to a vendor, forcing the university to pick up the tab for a significant repair.
According to university records, U.C. spent $19,423 to repair a two-person elevator that sometimes stalled between floors. E-mails released by U.C. under The Bay Citizen's records request show that Yudof's wife, Judith -- who has knee problems that make it difficult to climb stairs -- gently implored Mulligan to pay a delinquent bill from the elevator's installer, which refused to service the elevator until the bill was paid.
The university ultimately used another company to repair the elevator; on one occasion U.C. paid $3,180.24 in overtime ($530.04 per hour) to complete the work, according to a copy of the bill.
Mulligan said he unknowingly missed the payment to the elevator company but then immediately sent a check by express mail. He said he did not see a bill from the university until he entered into negotiations for damages two years later and U.C. officials sought reimbursement.
The university paid $70,806.73 to move Yudof to Oakland from Texas and $39,107.30 to move him again when Mulligan refused to extend the lease. The frantic move from the Oakland location lasted from 7:30 a.m. to 1:45 a.m. the next day, according to billing records. During the three-week search for a new house, the Yudofs took up residence in a discounted suite at the Claremont Hotel & Spa in the Berkeley Hills, at a cost of $8,394.16 to the U.C.
“I don't think it was a good experience,” Yudof said, referring to living in the Oakland house. “Under the circumstances, it was the best I could do.” The home was comparable to that of other university presidents, he added.
The U.C. spent $127,443 on security at the house, following threats against Yudof and several visits to the house by protesters.
Despite the near settlement, university officials said they intended to go to mediation with Mulligan and were prepared to litigate to recover the security deposit and other damages.
The money spent on the house came from a private endowment. It was a relatively small sum for a $20 billion, 180,000-employee public university that supports 10 campuses, five medical centers and a national laboratory. But the lavish spending and the numerous hours spent by university officials managing Mr. Yudof's personal affairs have chafed some members of his team.
“He essentially turned the Office of the President into his personal staff,” a university official said.
Much of the activity took place out of public view. The Office of the President filed at least six reports of “interim actions” related to the house that took place between public meetings of the Board of Regents.
Yudof and his wife have settled into a new home in Lafayette. The rent is $11,500 a month. The house “potentially will save the university as much as 25 percent of what was required to maintain the previous residence,” according to a report filed to the board.
The new house is 4,837 square feet, less than half the size of the Mulligan residence.
Tucked in the new lease is a provision designed to help protect the landlord against damages incurred. “Landlord must approve any items affixed to the walls,” it reads.
This article also appears in the Bay Area edition of the New York Times.
Tizzie Lish
Bay Citizen should look into Yudof's history of lavish spending on his presidential palaces. He ran into scandals when he was at U. of MN years ago. He thinks he is entitled to live like a king, on the public dime.
James Hoff
Seriously!? You guys aren't going to say anything about the fact tthat tuition was raised 32% and this guy is living in a house that costs the university more than $11,500 a month. That practically equals tuition for two students a month. So, basically UC is telling their student body that housing for one old guy, who already earns several hundred thousand dollars a year, is more important than educating 24 students a year. Way to go UC, and way to go Bay Citizen. Now how about some real reporting instead of real estate gossip. You do know thuis was published on the fornt page of the NY Times website? Disgraceful.
Rose Roll
James - you ask for "real reporting" instead of "real estate gossip." I'm confused - Steve Fainaru broke this story (which I believe qualifies as "real reporting") and the fact that the NYT published it on nytimes.com over the weekend is, I believe, a testament to the quality of the reporting.
Josh Wolf
I think James Hoff is looking for open condemnation against President Yudof, as opposed to simply laying out the facts and letting the anger fester from within. It's not a surprising expectation after years of MSNBC and FOX have completely transformed our media landscape.
The context Hoff provides does help focus that indignation, and it might have made a worthwhile addition to the story, but I suspect that part of the reason it read like "Real estate gossip" — a term that I think completely misses the mark — is that while cable news has become a format where personalities both report the news and comment on it, the old guard of just reporting the facts and letting the pieces fall where they may remains an integral part of journalism today.
Bronwen Rowlands
Oh my my my.
Good work, Bay Citizen.
Thomas Weadock
Is he related to Bernie Madoff?
Josh Wolf
" Will you throw in Air Force One and the White House?" Yudof has been quoted in response to suggestion that his salary be scaled back to that of President Obama. Now it turns out that he's been living in his own presidential palace on the public dime.
Any word on how much Yudof spent on publicly reimbursed travel during that same period?
Sean Pappas
You guys are being dumb. University presidents across the nation live in elaborate mansions that often cost seven figure amounts to maintain each year. How are you going to get someone to run what is arguably the biggest and best public university system in the world without offering them comparable housing?!?
"Tizzie," if you actually looked up the Minnesota issue, it was the previous president that overspent, not Yudof.
James Hoff
Sean,
I'm sorry, but the fact is Yudof is not that smart or that distinctly qualified that you or me could not do his job equally well or better. This whole idea of paying extravagant wages and benefits to get qualified leaders is complete nonsense. Great leaders lead well because they love and care about what they do not because of their pay scale. There have been several recent studies that support this. Economic incentive and performance are NOT related; or rather there is a negative correspondence between the two. A society that supports the idea that one man is worth the wages of 10 men, especially an idiot menace like Yudof, is a sick society indeed.
C Thomas
James, without getting into the business of defending many of the outrageous expenditures that organizations (public and private) will shill for their executives -- a lot of which is simply built into the culture and bureaucracy of such places -- I'd love to see you run the UC for a week before your head explodes.
$3,300,000,000 budget. 300,000 students. 10 campuses. 3 National Laboratories. 180,000 employees, 7 labor unions and shared governance with an academic senate. 36 natural reserves. Voters who are no longer interested in funding the best public university system in the world, but who cry foul when the university turns to other revenue streams. Yeah, we should hire a guy who would do this job for free.
In any case, your point that great leaders lead well because they love and care about what they do is correct... but it misses the point. Pay doesn't make someone perform well, but it is the best way to make sure someone performs for YOU instead of for your competition.
Tizzie Lish
C Thomas: your comment distorts and obsfucates. No one has suggested someone should run UC for free.
Tizzie Lish
I would love to run UC for a year. A week would be meaningless. There would not be enough time to familiarize myself with the landscape of the whole system. Give me a year, and the power to mandate change and I would give you lots of change. I know those labor unions are a challenge and students can be strident . . .but take money out of administrators: grossly slash the number of managers/administrations and put all that money saved into professors/teaching and roll back recent tuition increases.
There is so much fat in the UC budget. . . in fact, I am wondering why Yudof is even considered competent as I recall the choices he has made since he arrived, prioritizing administrators over students?
Alice Smith
Tizzie
The thing about cutting Management and Administrative personnel is that we do all the work. We have already been cut hence the professors/teaching personnel have to do a lot more administrative work which allows them less time to teach. Now if you mean the fat cat, free parking space, free housing, just got raises that erased that cut in pay and forced furlough time that we all are still struggling to make up for with second jobs then yes cut away.
Two months of Yudof's rent in his last palace is more than my salary for a year...and yes I am with you, I would love to run the UC for at least a year. I would start by cutting my own salary as president, give up the perks and stop living like royalty. It is sickening. -UCSC Slave
James Hoff
Thomas,
I don't understand what you mean by competition, or, I do, but I think it is a wholly inappropriate way to talk about universities. State Universities were created to serve the people of their state; they should not be competing against each other. UC should not have hired someone away from Texas who knew nothing about the needs of the UC students and faculty, but should instead have hired someone from within who could represent the stakeholders of the system.
James Hoff
The fact remains, however, that Yudof's outrageous expenses are a clear indication that he really does not care about the university that he runs--if he did he would at least agree to pay for his own housing (which could provide free tuition to dozens of students a year) before raising tuition 32%. Yudof wants to come out the other side of his tenure looking like a success, regardless of whether or not he actually accomplishes anything for the stakeholders of UC. This is because Yudof, like so many college and university administrators only cares about himself and his career (I actually wrote an editorial for the GC Advocate on exactly this point: http://www.gcadvocate.com/2010/02/whose-university/) I am certain there are several economics or business or humanities professors who love and care baout their university who would be willing to take the position for the same salary they already receive, and I am certain they would do a much better job.
Alice Smith
Nice discourse James, I am with you.
Sherri W. Morr
Hmmm, not so fast
I have always done a better job when I am valued, and well paid. Of course our country has a history of underpaying the very people who perhaps are our greatest asset.
S. Morr
Tizzie Lish
A university leader is a public servant who should be focussed on the mission of the university. Instead, we have allow corporate executive values to creep into the public sector. We don't have to follow the corporate values like lemmings into the sea.
There are many many people capable of doing the administrative and fundraising tasks that Yudof does.
I watched Yudof mess up at the U. of MN and he escaped to U texas, which is his hometown, in the nick of time, before his incompetence was reavealed in MN. I was shocked when I moved to Berk and saw Yudof had scored the UC job. He must have been one step ahead of scandal in austin.
Tizzie Lish
Yudof's presdesssor spent gobs of money upgrading the presidential mansion. I lived a block from the mansion at the time (in the rental apartment I lived in while going to law school). Then Yudof came along and spent a whole lot more after the last guy has spent many millions. Yudof's greed seemed small after the guy before him had raped the taxpayers but Yudof was also slimey and had a disgusting sense of being entitled to elite rich lifestyle. Not just prosperous, but like a king of old.
And Sean, how is it that Yudoff and his wife managed to squeeze into 'only' 4,500 square feet after stepping down from the Oakland mansion over over 10,000 square feet? Two people, ten thousand square feet for one party a month? You could use all kinds of space on the campus for fancy parties with donors. Two people, ten thousand square feet?
Tizzie Lish
You get someone to run the biggest/best ublic university by paying well and giving them a dream job. There are plenty who could do a great job willing to work for less and who would not require kingly luxury. It is a scam the top guys sell the public. Trust me. trim the salary in half and competent, expert professional people will still want the job . . . and they are more likely to actually care about the work and not so much about the perks.
Julie Chanter
The Bay Area is one of the most beautiful and most desirable places to live in the US and UC Berkeley is one of the most respected universities in the country. I'm sick of hearing how much teachers and administrators have to be paid to work here. Educators who have a passion for what they do should not have to be lured here with extravagant pay packages. Let them work elsewhere.
Cyril Manning
Julie, that is simply absurd, especially if you include "teachers" with administrators. UC Berkeley is respected because it recruits the very best scholars and researchers in their fields, not the other way around. When they leave, that respect diminishes. With the recent budget cuts and furloughs, "brain drain" has been a real fear -- and it's not just about the "poor spoiled professors," but the very future of California as our once-great public education system teeters on the brink. Many of the faculty already DO stay at Berkeley because they love the institution and the Bay Area, despite the constant headhunting from private universities in equally wonderful places - say, Cambridge, Palo Alto, New Haven, New York, London. And many young faculty really do struggle financially.
Tizzie Lish
Cyril, your post misrepresents and obsfucates Julie's comment. You yourself draw a distinction between teachers and administrators.
I know full well that a university needs leading scholars and teachers but to run their administration, they need competent management skills, with, I supposed, a background in education. It is an administative, management task and the world is stuffed with great, underemployed MBA's and PhD's and brilliant accountants who could do the job for less and would not require a luxurious, palatial mansion.
UC can't afford Yudof.
Sean Pappas
Tizzie, you clearly have some sort of agenda here. You defamatory statements as if they were fact. Show me one Yudof scandal, let alone the many that you refer to. You, or people like you, are the reason that it is so hard to get anything done in California. Learn some actual facts, rather than just represent your opinion as fact.
There is NO ONE that you would find that would competently do the job of UC president for any significantly lower fee than Yudof. If you can find someone to lead a $19 billion corporation for $200,000, then STAY AWAY FROM THEM. They won't know what they're doing.
As you whine about administrator salaries, maybe you should learn to look at the big picture and understand how little that makes up of the entire budget. I can only imagine the idiotic mistakes you would make as president of the UC. We would have thousands of Indians with no Chiefs. What do you do for a living? I guarantee that it does not involve managing large sums of money or a huge company.
Bronwen Rowlands
Let's not forget that Mark Yudof is only a tool, and not the sharpest in the shed. Gardeners Regent/financier Richard Blum and our esteemed governor knew this full well when they hired him, and it's likely they counted on his mean little hijinks to distract the public from the devastation his presidency is bringing to our once-great UC. The malignant flowers are about to bloom.
Dilys Harrell
Suggestion - if your spouse has knee problems, don't rent a four story house and then make us or the landlord pay $19,000 to repair the elevator.
Alice Smith
Here, Here Dilys brilliant, but Yudof needs to have a residence "comparable to other University Presidents".
Gotta keep up with the "University Jones'". "But the Stanford Chancellor got a BMW in his stocking".
He could just hire a student worker to carry her from floor to floor for a 1/4 of the cost.
-Tongue in Cheek
Zach Miller
I love how Richard Blum, Dianne Feinstein's multi-multi-millionaire husband on the UC Board of Regents, forced Yudof down everyone's throat by claiming he was a supremely well qualified, must-have-at-any-cost "talent." Now we suffer through arguably the most incompetent but highest paid President in UC history precisely when the state and country are mired in a serious economic downturn. We literally tax farmworkers to pay for Yudof's extravagances.
Yudof in his cravenness for money, desire to enrich himself at the public trough, and repeated verbal whoppers (the Daily Cal quoted him as saying he lives an ethereal life, blissfully unaware of what happens at the Berkeley campus due to his distant office and home in the hills) has PROVEN himself to be unworthy of the public trust. He's all about "me" when public service requires one to be all about the "good."
Sean Pappas
Zach, you are someone else who is overly opinionated, yet uninformed. I don't know why I even bothered trying to defend the truth in this kangaroo court of comments. They should have a test for people to make sure that they have a general understanding of the issues, before they are allowed to make idiotic comments like yours in a public forum.
Tizzie Lish
It seems to me, Sean Pappas, that your criteria for screening those who might choose to exercise their right of free speech need only pass this test: they should think like you, right?
Zach quotes Yudof. Yudof-the-clown actually told a DailyCal journalist that he, Yudof, lived a life apart from UC. Using your critieria, Zach, Yudof is not qualified to make comments about the issue of his fitness to do his job, because he made an idiotic comment to the press.
M Bikuri
Dynes didn't know how many people worked for UCOP and was not able to manage UC's public image, so he to moved on. Yudof didn't know 1.2 Million gallons of water was leaking from the house he was living in and also unable to manage the same image (as this and other articles suggest.) Maybe we should ask Dynes to come back. If nothing else, he was very much less expensive.
Roger Barnett
As an alumnus I get phone calls from time to time, from students acting as fundraisers, and from other alum reps, asking for money ... and the answer is: go ask Yudof, or at earlier times, one of his predecessors. Money lavished on these people is absurd - do not their fat salaries give them enough to rent appropriate housing. This is not the first president of the UC system involved in over the top real estate stuff. The first time I was astonished by this kind of malarky was with the Mormon president (cannot remember his name now), who had UC buy his house back some 20 years ago. He went back to Utah with a nice fact bonus derived from that transaction. Give them no money, they do not deserve it.
Glen Kohler
This is not news per se but a new example of the cult of greed and self aggrandizement that is swamping every social institution. The U.C. system has been subverted from being low-cost education for all Californians to very costly education whose administrators increasingly recruit students from abroad to extract even more money. As has been said in these comments the 'best' people work for service to others as much as personal gain. Knowing the system is burdened by unreasonable demands a theoretical exemplary administrator would not impose additional excessive demands. The appellation 'Regents' is all too accurate for those who are directing the course of this supposedly democratic public institution.
Mr. G
One would hope that an institution like UC would be able to hire someone with an understanding of ethics, especially as it's leader who should be setting an example for all other employees, its no wonder the system is so broken, massive greed has taken over.
Why is it I never read any stories about Yudof doing anything positive for UC, why exactly was he hired?
Bronwen Rowlands
Mark Yudof was brought in by Richard Blum, et. al., as a cat's-paw to brutally convert UC into a money-maker for the corporatists. It's that simple and that sad. These people wouldn't recognize the ethical life if it smashed them over the head in a dark alley.
Michael Strickland
Part of being a good leader at any institution is having some P.R. skills. Wasting grotesque amounts of money on luxury rental housing while students are having to pay huge tuition increases is the opposite of a good P.R. strategy, and for that alone Yudof should be shown the door.
And thank you, Zach Miller, for bringing up the name of the really serious pillager of public funds, Regent Richard Blum. What a disaster he and his wife have been for California, hogs at the public trough with a sense of entitlement that is really disturbing.
cloud minder
UCOP slams Bay Citizen's journalistic approach and skills in their response here
http://twitdoc.com/docview?doc=36426020&key=key-2epvqxw3quvaqhleflz7&usr=ucwatch&lcl=ucwatch/w6p6nccm/UCRESPONSE.pdf&hits=22&qs=9qdng4
does Bay Insider take any issue with anything UCOP wrote?
we have many questions about the whole issue and posted our additional questions here:
http://cloudminder.blogspot.com/
thank you for the story - much of this stuff goes unreported
cloud minder
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LANL (Los Alamos National Lab) Whistle-Blower Beaten (2005)
The Case of the Battered Whistle-Blower (2005)
Kin of 9 Who Died Waiting Accuse UCI (2005)
Stolen Laptop Recovered, Fate Of 98,000 Records Unknown (2005)
UCLA Suspends Its Willed Body Program (2004)
UCLA Acknowledges Sale Of Body Parts As Donors' Families Sue School (2004)
Whistleblowers at Los Alamos Fired in Retaliation (2002)
UCSD Big Money and the Ball Club (2000)
When Scientists Kidnap Embryos (2000)
Scaling the Salary Tower / UC, CSU trustees consider hefty raises for top university posts (1999)
Claims Against UC Irvine's Fertility Clinic (1997)
Milan Moravec
Yudof,it is not comming out of my pocket not, so why care? Sorry Tale of UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Office: easily grasped by the public, lost on University of California’s President Yudoff. The UC Berkley budget gap has grown to $150 million, & still the Chancellor is spending money that isn't there on $3,000,000 consultants. His reasons range from the need for impartiality to requiring the consultants "thinking, expertise, & new knowledge".
Does this mean that the faculty & management of UC Berkeley – flagship campus of the greatest public system of higher education in the world - lack the knowledge, integrity, impartiality, innovation, skills to come up with solutions? Have they been fudging their research for years? The consultants will glean their recommendations from faculty interviews & the senior management that hired them; yet $ 150 million of inefficiencies and solutions could be found internally if the Chancellor & Provost Breslauer were doing the work of their jobs (This simple point is lost on UC’s leadership).
The victims of this folly are Faculty and Students. $ 3 million consultant fees would be far better spent on students & faculty.
There can be only one conclusion as to why inefficiencies & solutions have not been forthcoming from faculty & staff: Chancellor Birgeneau has lost credibility & the trust of the faculty & Academic Senate leadership (C. Kutz, F. Doyle). Even if the faculty agrees with the consultants' recommendations - disagreeing might put their jobs in jeopardy - the underlying problem of lost credibility & trust will remain. (Context: greatest recession in modern times)
Contact your representatives in Sacramento: tell them of the hefty self-serving $’s being spent by UC Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau & Provost Breslauer.
Mr. G
With all of these private slush funds, and restricted donors, why doesn't one of them pay the cost of fixing up the old mansion? Otherwise, sell it off...
Roger Barnett
Exactly: we have just learned that Stanislaus State University "foundation" (a private slush fund) paid Sarah Palin $75k for a 30 minute speech back in June, plus of course private jet or first class plane tickets from Alaska, hotel suites yada, yada, yada. And we also learned that a private donor offered the use of his private jet to bring her from Alaska. UÇ Berkeley must have far bigger slush finds and private donors than little ole Stanislaus State. Get one of them to fix up the Blake House, as Mr. G suggests ... hell UC could even change the name of the house should the donor(s) so desire. Who cares what it is called, as long as it is comfortable and works well, and having been on the grounds of Blake House I can certainly say it is beautifully located, much better than the Oakland Hills or Lafayette.