The Ranger Online

Issue date: 6/30/08 Section: News

Bruce Leslie [Click to enlarge]

Despite the fact that Chancellor Bruce Leslie started his position at this district Nov. 1, 2006, he still managed to take the runner-up spot of highest paid public employees in Houston for 2007, according to a database of public employees.

His previous employer, Houston Community College System, denies that he was ever paid for this time period, although a reporter for the Chronicle said the system provided the salary information, which is public information, to the Houston Chronicle.

The Chronicle made the database available on its Web site Wednesday.

Leslie's résumé shows that he was chancellor of the Houston Community College System from October 2000 to June 2006. However, according to the database of public employees' salaries maintained by the Houston Chronicle, Leslie was paid $336,583 in 2007 by the Houston Community College System under the title chancellor emeritus.

This is significantly more than what Leslie made in 2007-08 for his work here in San Antonio. The personnel register for the 2007-08 budget has his salary at $289,999.92, which does not include benefits such as paid vacation and a car.

This in itself is a large bump from the salary for this district's chancellor in 2005-06, before Leslie arrived, which was $243,000.

Mary Spangler, who is the current chancellor for the Houston Community College System, also makes an appearance at No. 9 on the newspaper's list with a salary of $242,106, which includes a $10,000 car allowance.

Dan Arguijo, associate vice chancellor of communications for the Houston Community College System, said both the figures for Leslie and Spangler for this time period were incorrect, but he would not go further into what the actual figures are or why he thinks the database is incorrect.

He said Leslie does not have any contractual or financial connections with the institution now or since he left in June 2006.

All relevant information would have to be obtained through a public information request, he said, which The Ranger submitted Thursday.

The state Open Records law allows up to 10 days for a public entity to respond to such a request if it takes that long to gather the information and determine that the information is public. If the entity does not believe requested information to be public, a opinion can be requested from the state attorney general's office. A response from the state can take up to several months.

Leo Zuniga, associate vice chancellor of communications at district, called The Ranger before Arguijo was able to give relevant information to The Ranger. He also said Leslie received no pay from the Houston institution in 2007.

Zuniga said the database containing Leslie's name and pay is missing some information that should be on there, such as the inclusion of university presidents and administrators at the M.D. Anderson Hospital.

Presumably, such an inclusion might change Leslie's ranking on the list but would not remove his name from the list.

However, Arguijo, who contacted Zuniga with this explanation, was not given a link to or told by The Ranger the source of the database and said he did not see it.

Matt Stiles, a staff writer for the Houston Chronicle who requested the data for the database, said the figures published came directly from the Houston Community College System in the form of an Excel document copied onto a CD.

Stiles said that the database on the Chronicle site did accidentally omit housing allowance given to current Chancellor Spangler totaling $28,546. Her total pay including this allowance is $270,653, which matches the information supplied by the Houston Community College System, Stiles said.

He said the data may have been omitted because Spangler was the only employee of the district that was shown to have received a housing allowance.

He said the database will be updated to include that information.

Missing from the database are forms of compensation such as pension benefits and insurance, Stiles said.

Zuniga would not discuss the terms under which Leslie left the Houston Community College System, only saying that it received plenty of coverage in the Houston Chronicle.

He said Leslie's situation with his former employer is not a case of "double dipping."

These explanations of Leslie's salary do not jibe with what has been reported by the Houston Chronicle.

In a June 2, 2006, article, it was reported, "Under a separation agreement between Leslie and the board, Leslie will collect his salary until Nov. 1, 2007. Should he get another job before the final year of the agreement, he would receive a lump sum payment equal to one year of his base salary, which is roughly $255,000."

The Chronicle also reported that disputes cropped up between Leslie and the board before he left, including funding shortfalls and sluggish expansion plans; however, it was reported that board members said these disputes did not factor into Leslie exiting the institution.

"Even with more than two years remaining on his contract, Leslie has been expected to leave for months because of increasingly strained relations with board members," the Chronicle reported May 27, 2006, in an article about Leslie being considered for a job at Santa Fe Community College.

Adriana Contreras, deputy to the chancellor, said Leslie is in college station on district business.

The Chronicle database can be viewed here.

The two Houston Chronicle articles and other Chronicle articles can be read through the NewsBank database available through this college's library at www.accd.edu/sac/lrc. The two articles sourced are: "HCC chancellor gives resignation - Split is called amicable; Leslie will stay on as school employee," by Zeke Minaya, June 2, 2006. "HCC chancellor in running for Santa Fe job - Board will meet here Thursday about the future of embattled Leslie," by Matthew Tresaugue, May 27, 2006.

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