SSU launches transparency website

<p>Sonoma State University has launched a new “transparency” website intended to provide greater access to public records related to the school's administration and budgets.</p><p>Larry Furukawa-Schlereth, SSU's chief financial officer, said the website would improve the public's ability to review financial and other documents.</p><p>“They were always available but they weren't as easily accessible through the Internet in the past,” he said. </p><p>The website launch comes at a time when some faculty members are pushing for a no-confidence vote on SSU President Ruben Armiñana and Furukawa-Schlereth. The effort is based partly on criticism that the two aren't responsive to concerns about their financial management and that they consistently exclude faculty from key budget discussions.</p><p>It also comes in the wake of disclosures by the university's academic foundation that it had loaned more than $9 million to a former board member, developer Clem Carinalli, who declared bankruptcy last year and defaulted on a $1.25 million loan from the foundation.</p><p>Those events prompted State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, to call for more public disclosure of records by CSU campuses and campus groups such as the foundation.</p><p>CSU Chancellor Charles Reed directed each of the system's 23 campuses to start the websites after Yee urged Reed to comply voluntarily with a transparency executive order from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a CSU spokeswoman said.</p><p>The order, signed in June, said all state government agencies must post on a state-run website information including audits of their operations and contracts exceeding $5,000.</p><p>But Yee said the CSU transparency initiative falls far short of what he called for. “Posting a few tax returns and other information that was already public is hardly complying with the Governor's executive order,” he said. “This information would have done little to curb the abuses at Sonoma State's foundation.”</p><p>The site includes budgets and expenditure reports, and links to reports and audits of SSU operations, its academic foundation and various auxiliary operations that run the school's food, housing and parking services.</p><p>The site also includes certain aspects of contracts of $50,000 or greater in value that the university enters into.</p><p>Advocates for greater access to public records said it was a positive step forward.</p><p>“Information is only public to the extent that one can access it,” said Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, a San Rafael-based nonprofit.</p><p>“One could still fault them for not putting even more up but this is a notable start,” he said.</p><p>But faculty members who have criticized Armiñana and Furukawa-Schlereth said that while the transparency website is welcome, it does little to resolve issues they've raised.</p><p>Among those are complaints that faculty members aren't included in key discussions to set spending priorities, that the $110 million Green Music Center, still incomplete after more than a decade, diverts resources from the school's education mission and that not enough is disclosed about university fundraising efforts for the center.</p><p>“I really do welcome all of these documents to be publicly available, however, unfortunately they don't really address the concerns I and others have had,” said Noel Byrne, a sociology professor who has pushed for the no-confidence vote.</p><p>“We have a long way to go before we can claim at SSU that we have true transparency in our fiscal affairs,” said Robert Karlsrud, a history professor.</p><p>Furukawa-Schlereth said the school is open to suggestions. “If folks feel that there would be other information (to post on the website) that would be useful, I'd be open to that and I think the university would be open to that.”</p>