9/12/2014 update:
Job ad here: http://jobs.uoregon.edu/unclassified.php?id=4873. Still no update to the GC’s webpage about who is currently working there. Meanwhile Doug Park wants $79.60 for the docs explaining Geller’s sudden resignation:
The University of Oregon has received your public records request for “any emails or other public records sent or received by Randy Geller between March 9th and May 6th, related to his April 21 decision to retire, as announced by ‘Around the O'” 06/17/2014, attached. The office has at least some documents responsive to your request. By this email, the office is providing you with an estimate to respond to your requests.
The office estimates the actual cost of responding to your request to be $79.60. Upon receipt of a check made payable to the University of Oregon for that amount, the office will proceed to locate, copy, and provide the records you have requested that are not exempt from disclosure. Your check may be sent to the attention of Office of Public Records, 6207 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-6207.
Request for a public interest fee waiver denied. Seriously? What does it take? A story on KATU television?
9/4/2014: Gottfredson gave Doug Park a $68K raise and Geller’s family bowl game junkets to serve as acting GC for a year
Frankly, I’m as tired of this ad hominem shit as you are. UO should have an informed discussion about our dis-functional General Counsel’s office, and the expensive contracts with the law firms that our former President Dave Frohnmayer and former General Counsel Melinda Grier just happen to be “Of Counsel” with. But our administration will not let that happen. They won’t even release the public records necessary to get it started. So, here’s my effort to chip away at the edges.
President Coltrane and Provost Bronet just announced that they would hold a national search for a replacement for General Counsel Randy Geller, who “retired” in the midst of the recent basketball rape allegation coverup.
In 2009, President Lariviere had announced a national search to replace GC Melinda Grier, whom he’d fired for involvement in that year’s athletic scandal. The desultory search effort failed, and we ended up stuck with Grier’s Associate GC, Geller. Here’s hoping that doesn’t happen again with Geller’s Associate GC Doug Park (Assistant GC under Grier). Because this office really, really needs a new operating system.
In the last few years the GC’s office has lost two other lawyers, Mark Kaufmann and John F. Salmon III, without explanation. So, who is now in charge of defending UO and its employees, and implementing the new Legal Services Policy, assuming Coltrane signs it? From what I can tell:
Doug Park
Sam Hill (hired a year or so ago)
Melissa Matella (hired a month or two ago)
What are their qualifications? Sorry, Dave Hubin’s public records office, as advised by – of course – Doug Park’s GC’s office, refuses to release that information, despite the obvious public interest in this matter. Hubin, Park, and now apparently Coltrane and Bronet, are using an obscure loophole in the PR law by claiming that UO’s attorneys are actually faculty, and therefore their resumes are “protected faculty records”. Really? Here’s what I do have.
Park’s new contract for $209K, signed by Gottfredson a month before he resigned:
The Johnson Hall administrator family bowl game junket package:
Park’s previous salary:
100% raise since 2009:
I’m surprised that application materials are not public records. Even in the political cesspool of the state of Illinois, the applications/resumes of successful job candidates are available. I’m not familiar with applicable Oregon FOIA laws, but they sound inadequate. Is their no recourse when public bodies obstruct the public’s right to know?
Oregon is the new Illinois. Same kind of political machine. Even the AG is from Illinois.
I’ve made a petition to the Lane County District Attorney’s office. They tell me that the president of the university can keep these resumes secret by claiming that the lawyers are “faculty members”. It’s an absurd claim, and at this point my only recourse is a lawsuit against the university, or further ad hominem efforts to embarrass those behind it.
( For those that don’t know, Robert Bionaz is one of the Chicago State professors behind the muckraking http://csufacultyvoice.blogspot.com/ blog, and a plaintiff in the recently filed FIRE lawsuit agains CSU, http://www.thefire.org/cases/chicago-state-university-stand-up-for-speech/)
If they are faculty members, they should be paying union dues or explicitly exempted from doing so. As far as I know, they are on neither list.
It’s a cozy insider game where public resources are diverted to private pockets. All while Big Money Sports Bellotti gets one of the highest PERS payouts on the books–of course Frohn and Grier are no slouches when it comes to sucking the public teat either. All in a state with high unemployment and high taxes.
A violation of the public trust. The people of Oregon should be getting tired of this ongoing ripoff.
All that’s left is sucking the public teat. Looting the public treasury, the only thing these parasites are good at doing…
The public seems to feel like its trust is violated, and the response is … To strip UO of state funding and completely privatize the institution.
Legislators, average Oregonians and Beaver fans don’t want to fund the university. And they are getting their wish, in no small part by allowing a climate of opacity to fester.
Oh, I don’t know. Why is it the public’s responsibility to fund a uni where the bulk of profs are adjunct, temporary workers, reason being to fund more admins, who neither teach nor do research? Why should the public be on the hook for the bonds to pay for spa like rec centers, palatial EMU’s, and sushi availability? Why is it on the public to allow their flagship to increase enrollment of students, in many cases, unqualified students? Why is it on the public to fund a uni which pretty much abandoned academic rigor in order to fund a minor league football franchise? That’s on the bright lights that run the joint, not the taxpayers…..
To keep some things in perspective, state funding per resident student is already lower at the UO than any other state college and has been for years, well before the current sad state of affairs. net tuition for needy resident students is also lower. Almost none of that is taxpayer money. Just to keep things in some perspective.
OK, so they are sucking off the rising tuition of our students. Not better in my mind.
Charlie,
While it is true that OSU has been increasing its enrollment – and, to be fair, has been spending public money building numerous classroom buildings for those students – where is your evidence that OSU is enrolling “unqualified students”? More of Oregon’s top-ranked high school graduates choose OSU than any other in-state option. Are you saying Oregon high school graduates are “unqualified” for college matriculation?
I mean, you did say flagship…
Surely the school is able to find better representation than Doug Park. Apparently not. The state of legal affairs at the school is a sad one. They might as well hire Melinda Grier back and let her do some more hand shake contracts. What do they have to hide by withholding those records? It makes one wonder. I still do not see the benefit of the school having an office of lawyers as faculty members when the school has to continually contract out legal work to outside firms. What exactly does general counsel do aside from drawing up lucrative contracts with outside law firms?
I have a great idea. How about we actually give people who teach on a regular basis the distinction of being faculty and not administrators? Wow what a wild concept. Even better why do we not make the administrators pay to attend events like everyone else? Oh right. That would be honest and fair. I think it is ludicrous that administrators are allowed to be faculty when they do not teach and-or do not meet the academic requirements to actually be a teacher. Teach regularly or lose your faculty title.
Matella used to work for Nike. Now she works for the University of Nike.