From today's San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/04/04/MNM516SOHR.DTL
UCSF draws the line at $75 bottles of wine
Jim Doyle, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, April 4, 2009
UC San Francisco has issued new rules on how much money its medical faculty and staff may spend for wine at recruitment dinners and other University of California functions.
The maximum reimbursement: $75 per bottle of wine, or $15 per glass.
There is no explicit limit placed on how many bottles of wine may be purchased for such occasions, according to documents obtained by The Chronicle.
"The vast majority of expenses submitted here are entirely reasonable and appropriate, but every once in while things go out of whack," Doug Levy, a UCSF spokesman, said Friday. "Usually it's perfectly innocent, but every now and then people forget that it's university money."
He recounted one example of a rejected voucher for "a dinner for six - and half the bill is wine." He also gave an example of a faculty member who "graciously invited a foreign guest to choose the wine."
Levy said the new policy, which went into effect March 17, was prompted by just a few incidents of expensive wining and dining by staff, along with an overall need to tighten UCSF's spending during hard economic times. Levy said that as far he knows, no explicit dollar limit was placed on wine previously.
The new policy restricts the purchase of alcohol with university funds and covers employees in the Department of Medicine, which is UCSF's largest department and includes more than 2,000 staff and faculty members.
"Please distribute this information in your divisions so that all faculty and staff are aware of this new policy," Tracy Schaefer, a senior administrator, wrote in a March 16 e-mail to medical division chiefs and administrators at San Francisco General Hospital, one of UCSF's medical training centers.
Specific details of the new policy were spelled out in a separate e-mail by Michael Chen, a senior finance manager in the Department of Medicine.
In addition to the new restrictions, Chen pointed out UC's general reimbursement rules that apply to all 10 campuses for university-related lunches and dinners, noting that exceptions are granted in special circumstances.
"Although there is no limit as to the amount of wine that can be ordered, the non-exceptional lunch and dinner per-person reimbursement ceilings ($38 and $64, respectively) apply to the cost of food and wine," he wrote. "Please note that reimbursement for wine will be limited even if the total per-person cost of the meal does not exceed the non-exceptional reimbursement ceiling."
Additionally, Chen stressed another new policy at UCSF: "No reimbursement from university funds is allowed for mixed drinks or hard liquor."
Neither Schaefer nor Chen returned messages left by The Chronicle.
"What I have not been able to find out is how they decided on the $75," Levy said. "I guess it depends on the restaurant. I would hope that for $75 you're getting something great. ... In the past, the guidelines were ambiguous."
He said that deciding what constitutes a reasonable expense for faculty or administrative recruitment dinners is "a complicated one, because the nature of recruitment for an institution like UCSF inevitably requires some level of entertainment.
"Those meals have a real business purpose. But that doesn't mean they have to be treated like a banker or a corporate executive," he said. "Coming to UCSF means being willing to be a part of a public institution and be proud of it. We want people who are passionate about the patient care and research that we do."
UCSF, including its prestigious School of Medicine, expects to face rising operational costs and significant revenue cuts in the next year.
State funding for the medical school is projected to be cut by $7.2 million in the 2009-10 fiscal year, according to a recent memo by Dr. Sam Hawgood, the medical school's interim dean.
UC's systemwide policy is that expenses for alcoholic beverages may not be charged to state funds. The university system's 10 campuses receive only a small portion of their revenue from the state treasury; its additional revenue sources include alumni contributions and endowment funds, student tuition and fees, government contracts and grants, and such services as medical care.
"We're trying to remind people that there is a limit," Levy said, "and you have to have a good reason for going past it, and an expensive bottle of wine is not a good reason. ... We all need to be responsible for the university's money."
E-mail Jim Doyle at
jdoyle@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
