Trustees to Examine Payments Paid to Retired California State U. Officials

California State University paid seven departing executives hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece to complete projects after their retirement, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

For most of the projects, no final report or product was required, and the Board of Trustees was not consulted.

Other top executives have also been offered payments that have attracted questions, such as two executives who were paid six-figure salaries for a year while they took leaves to look for other jobs, the newspaper said.

“I am just appalled that this is occurring when the reality is that the budget has been cut so many times, and we cannot afford these kind of perks,” Ricardo F. Icaza, a trustee of the university, told the newspaper.

The trustees plan to discuss the payments to recently retired executives at a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, the newspaper said.

Charles B. Reed, chancellor of the system, defended the arrangements, saying that “all executive transition programs approved or implemented under my leadership have conformed to trustee policy.”