University president says Palin contract stolen

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The president of the California university where Sarah Palin is scheduled to speak said Wednesday that pages from a contract between a school foundation and Gov. Palin were stolen from a campus administrator’s office last week, calling into question claims by two of the school's students, who say they found the pages in a campus dumpster:

California State University, Stanislaus president Hamid Shirvani said the five-page document at the center of an escalating controversy over access to records was taken from a recycling bin inside the office of Susana Gajic-Bruyea, vice president for university advancement.

“Susana threw the pages into her recycling bin in her office some time ago,” Shirvani said in a phone interview. “Somebody either broke into her office to get them or it was somebody who had access to her office.”

Shirvani has asked police in the Central Valley city of Turlock to investigate the matter.

The state attorney general’s office announced Tuesday it would investigate the university and its foundation for their handling of the contract related to the June 25 speech by Palin. Authorities said the investigation has nothing to do with Palin herself.

The university told state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco/San Mateo, it did not have any documents related to the speech and said it had referred the matter to Matt Swanson, board president of the California State University, Stanislaus Foundation.

Swanson sent letters to Yee and The Associated Press stating that Palin’s contract had a nondisclosure clause. He also said university foundations and other auxiliary organizations were not subject to the same public records requirements as the university itself.

Swanson has not responded to requests for comment on the investigation. He has said the Palin event would be funded entirely by private donations.

The investigation by state Attorney General Jerry Brown was launched after two students said they had found pages of the contract in a campus trash bin.

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Shirvani said Gajic-Bruyea was one of two people in possession of the contract document. In addition to her role in the university administration, she serves on the foundation board and was therefore privy to contract negotiations, he said.

He said the students’ claims that the documents had been thrown away were preposterous and described the controversy over Palin’s appearance as political theater.

“We’re getting attacked over political ideology,” said Shirvani, who is also chairman of the foundation board. “If it was Michael Moore or Al Gore, forget it, nobody would ever ask us about the contract.”

In a news release issued by the university Wednesday, Shirvani referred to "the alleged dumping of documents into a university dumpster," and said that he hopes Brown's investigation "will clarify how a foundation document could have ended up in a state senator’s hands."

- JP