University of Southern California
Volume LXVII, Number 105	Los Angeles, California	Friday, April 11, 1975
L.A. supervisors may end Med Center arrangement
Students misinterpret 50% financial aid hike
Daily
Trojan
BY PETER BOYER
Staff Writer
The so-called “sweetheart arrangement” between the Los Angeles County Health Service Department and the USC and UCLA medical schools may soon be ended by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
Supervisor Kenneth Hahn called for a reorganization of the County Health Service Department on March 25 when he discovered that the two schools had been paying S3.000 to $5,000 a year to top administrators of four county hospitals.
Under the arrangement, the schools made supplemental payments to administrators and assistant administrators at the County-USC Medical Center. Harbor General Hospital. Rancho Los Amigos General Hospital and Martin Luther King Hospital.
The payments were made to individuals who served as instructors or administrators at the university and as administrators or physicians at the hospitals.
One physician at the County-USC Medical Center, who asked not to be identified, said that the supplemental payments served a very necessary purpose.
He said the payments made administrative positions at the universities more lucrative, thereby enabling the schools to attract highly qualified administrators. Any conflict of interest, he said, would not result in personal gain but would aid the medical schools.
But Hahn said that what he called the sweetheart arrangement. which began in 1955. presented a rather unusual influence over eivil-service hospital administrators as it relates to their directional and management policies.
“We need a full airing of this,” he said. "Have the schools gagged the employees to prevent criticism? It is inherently wrong for a man to be divided in his allegiance.”
USC dismissed its administrators who were also working for the county in an administrative capacity on March 15 of this year. But there are still administrators at the university who receive supplementary payments from the county for nonadminis-trative functions.
Allen W Mathies, interim dean of the School of Medicine, is one of these who still receives payment from the county.
“I see it as a confluence of interest. rather than a conflict of interest,’' Mathies said.
“I really don’t understand the supervisors’ complaint. This thing has been going on for years. Considering some of the kinds of things the university wants and the kind of things the county wants, it is sometimes much easier to use the same people.”
In order to determine the legitimacy of the supplemental payment arrangement, the Board of Supervisors instructed Harry' L. Hufford. chief administrative officer of the County Health Services Department, to report on the history and current status of supplemental payments.
The board also instructed Liston A. Witherill, director of the department, to answer a series of questions concerning the pos-sibility of conflict-of-interest violations.
Noting that there are still a number of supplements being paid. Meg Gilbert, deputy assistant to Supervisor Baxter Ward, said, “We need to know the nature of these supplements, what people are doing for those supplements, if there is any conflict of interest by anyone who is receiving them, how it got started in the first place, what arrangements have been made since then as a result.
“For instance, there were a number of administrators who did nothing other than their county jobs who were getting salaries from the universities. Now, there must have been a
ROCK OUT—The Delgado Brothers Band turned on band performed for free and entertained students the volume and performed at the Student Activities under partly cloudy skies. DT photo by Bob Chavez. Center patio at noon on Thursday. The five-member
Many students now receiving financial aid misunderstood the implications ofthe reported 50% increase in money available for financial aid next year and are flooding the Financial Aid Office with requests for an increase in their awards, Pamela Walbom, director of financial aid, said Thursday.
“The university student aid budget for the 1975-76 academic year has been raised to $6 5 million from the 54.3 million level which was approved at this time last year for the 1974-75 academic year.” said William G. Wagner, special assistant for academic record services.
“Although the budget has increased by $2.2 million, or about 50%, the number of aid applicants has risen to about 9.000 from the 5.000 who applied last year. Consequently, the aid per student cannot be expected to rise 50%," Wagner said.
Walbom said those students who will need even more financial aid than the university can offer should apply for a Basic Educational Opportunity Grant or a Federally Insured Student Loan.
reason why they were getting those payments. There must have been a benefit from the schools in some way.”
But Mathies said that anyone who is being paid by both the university and the county is performing legitimate duties for both employers. What the board was really questioning, Mathies said, was whether an individual can legitimately have two employers. Mathies thinks one can.
When he was told of Mathies’ reaction. Gilbert said,“ You can do more than one job at a time. But if they were doing it during the eight hours that they are required to give to the county, then we don't consider that legitimate. It would have to be outside of what they were performing for the county.”
The reports on the arrangement should be complete by the end of May. "When we get those reports, we’ll have to decide what to do from there, based on the answers that he (Witherill) has come up with,” Gilbert said. “If there is a conflict of interest, the supplemental payments certainly will be stopped.”
FIGHT ON—Mary Conroy, professor of physical education at Cal State L.A., gave a demonstration on self-defense at the Women's Resource Center at the YWCA on Thursday. DT photo by Shuji Ito.
LAS collective bargaining poll receives strong faculty response
BY SARAH HECK
Associate Editor
The recent polling of the faculty in the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences to determine how many favored the idea of collective bargaining was a only test run.
The strong response to the poll has prompted the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) to expand the polling to include the faculty of the professional schools, said John E. Elliot, professor of economics and copresident of the association.
Approximately 50% of the LAS
faculty returned the designation cards. Return of the cards denoted a positive response.
A new set of designation cards has been mailed out to all faculty members at this campus. This included a second mailing to LAS faculty members.
Elliot said that the test poll was administered in LAS because it is the oldest school at the university and probably would elicit the most interest for collective bargaining.
“We wanted to test the hypothesis. If our hypothesis was wrong and we got a weak response from the LAS faculty we would know not to go any farther. But we got a strong response and so it seemed reasonable to continue the poll and include the professional schools,” Elliot said.
The test poll surveyed the approximately 350 faculty members in LAS. The expanded poll will survey about 1.000 faculty members at the University Park
campus, LAS faculty included.
Elliot will meet with the medical faculty members later this month to discuss collective bargaining. There are approximately 400 faculty at the Health Sciences Campus who could be included in any decision.
Results of this second poll are expected in another three to four months. Elliot said the results will be released, “when we get close to 50% in total University Park response.
“I think very little is gained by offering period reports. When we get 50% or more it will be the appropriate time to make the results public.”
However, this policy of complete secrecy has caused some consternation.
Richard Perry, president of the Faculty Senate, said he had only heard rumors about the results of the test poll. “I would have liked to see some early reporting, personally,” Perry said.