Margolis, the Bruin Democrat, says, "The real problem with the high salaries for UC administrators like Dr. Feinberg is that they're coming at a time in a decade where students have been going to school every fall and finding out they have to pay more money to get less and less allocated to their education."
UC officials declined to discuss Feinberg's compensation, or specifics of his performance.
KYLE T. WEBSTER
David Feinberg, Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center CEO
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Steve Montiel, spokesman for the UC Office of the President, wrote very broadly, in a prepared statement: "We wouldn't have world-class medical schools without world-class medical centers — and vice versa. ... All of this is made possible by great staff and leadership."
Feinberg was plucked three and a half years ago from UCLA's Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital, where he was medical director, to become acting head of the entire hospital system. When Block became chancellor a month later, he approved the appointment of his medical school psychiatrist colleague, Feinberg.
Are public medical executives such as Feinberg hard to replace? Stanford University easily found another executive when it didn't get Feinberg, poaching UCLA's hospital system chief operating officer, Amir Dan Rubin, who was making a mere $547,600 for overseeing operations at UCLA's four hospitals and outpatient centers.
Rubin's résumé is far weightier than Feinberg's. Previously, Rubin was chief operating officer at Stony Brook University Hospital, in New York. He oversaw operations at the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital while Feinberg was medical director.
Looking at the two men's histories at UCLA, it's hard to identify what about the hospital system's strengths can be attributed to Feinberg as opposed to Rubin — or to other factors altogether. Rubin declined an interview request from the Weekly.
Feinberg is something of a PR wizard, who tries to get to know as many people in the health care system as possible, and he has proved a popular boss who makes a point of looking out for the welfare of employees.
"I invite 10 people to lunch once a week randomly from different departments," he said in an online 2008 interview with Mike Cottrill in Smart Business Los Angeles. "I attend as many ceremonies as possible, I attend memorial services — any of the things where the staff is coming together. ... I try to be out of my office as much as possible because I'm 100 percent about the relationships."
The Weekly filed a California Public Records Act Request on Jan. 31, seeking Feinberg's performance reviews, calendar and recent professional emails — all public information.
UCLA has failed to provide most of it. Frances Thompson, UCLA's public records coordinator, says in an email: "Due to the sensitive nature of Dr. Feinberg's position, it is difficult to predict when this [request] will be completed."
But it is known that Feinberg's peers in California — and at many top Pac-10 schools — are paid significantly less than Feinberg, not just at UC San Francisco.
At the University of Washington Medical Center, ranked 12th by U.S. News & World Report, executive director Stephen Zie-niewicz makes just $477,372 per year plus standard benefits.
He gets no "incentive" bonuses or "retention" bonuses. He is far more experienced than Feinberg. Before joining UW, Zieniewicz had 24 years of health care management experience, including stints as chief operating officer at Saint Louis University Hospital and Tenet Healthcare Corp.
In 2009, UC Davis Medical Center CEO Ann Madden Rice made $584,300; UC Irvine's associate vice chancellor for health affairs and CEO Terry Belmont earned $659,000; and UC San Diego's associate vice chancellor and CEO Thomas Jackiewicz earned $600,000. Feinberg got $210,739 in "incentive" pay, Laret got $176,739, Rice got $165,415, Belmont got $147,021, and Jackiewicz got $146,039.
Yet aside from Feinberg, none of these highfliers will get $250,000 a year from his or her nonprofit, public medical centers — or from an affiliated donor community — simply to stay on the job.
Now, Jerry Brown is about to cut another $1 billion from higher education, and UCLA will take a major hit.
Hill, the undergraduate student body president, says the regents' and Block's focus on executive compensation threatens UC's other missions, including its role as a vehicle for social mobility for students from lower-income families.
"It's much easier to focus on [perceived] quality, versus the hard questions of how to maintain open doors," Hill says.
Adds Santos: "At the end of the day, we need to ask ourselves what the purpose of the university is."
Block and other UCLA leaders say "they want to keep the purpose of the university for research, teaching and service — and use that to justify higher fees" and tuition, Santos says.
But when criticized for skyrocketing executive compensation, he says, the administrators struggle to rationally justify it.
As long as the double standard continues, he says, "Whether [the administration] likes it or not, students are not going to be happy."
