The UNC Board of Governors is poised to clamp down on leave policies that wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars on UNC administrators who were supposed to return to teaching but instead retired, found work elsewhere or were shown the door.

A board committee Thursday approved a revised policy that would prevent chancellors and presidents from taking the paid leave without returning to the classroom. The revised policy also would reduce the amount of pay those officials would receive while on leave, as well as the amount of time they could spend away from campus. (N&O)

The parking sign outside the meeting Monday morning called it the "Burr-Bowles Summit" but it could just have easily called it a "love fest."

Republican Sen. Richard Burr and the man he defeated in 2004, Democrat Erskine Bowles, now president of the University of North Carolina, were the stars of the North Carolina Economic Development Summit, Rob Christensen reports.

"I've had a chance to work with this guy for four full years and nobody works harder or smarter for North Carolina than Richard Burr does," Bowles told about 200 people at N.C. Central University. "His focus on this state is truly unbelievable."

In introducing Bowles, Burr said: "Erskine Bowles is the best president of the university system we had the pleasure of having."

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CHROMOSOME TAX: North Carolina is one of nearly 40 states that still allow health insurance companies to consistently charge women more than men for the same coverage. The practice, known as gender differentiation, could be banned under nearly all of the health overhaul bills now being considered in Congress. (N&O)

TAXING DECISION: Lawmakers next month start a series of meetings on changing how North Carolina taxes. While there is broad agreement among legislators that the state's tax system needs an overhaul, it is less clear how quickly any such rewrite could happen and whether it could earn bipartisan support. (News & Record)

HIRE EDUCATION: North Carolina's public universities have filled hundreds of jobs in recent years without a formal search and without advertising the openings. (Citizen-Times)

UNC system President Erskine Bowles says he's a big believer in transparency.

But he but won't recommend openness when it comes to finding the next leader for N.C. State. That, he said, could discourage top candidates from seeking the chancellor's job.

Bowles, who has been open about recent troubles the university, said this week, "It's my responsibility to make sure we get the best candidates possible to run N.C. State, or any of the campuses."

During the last search for a UNC-Chapel Hill chancellor, Bowles said, several candidates would not have participated if their identities had been released."One is today still running a major university and had that person's name been made public, they would not have allowed us to consider them as a candidate," he told reporters and editors at The News & Observer.

"My job is to get the best field, and to try to make the best decision from that field, and I think if we have to make their names public it would reduce the quality of the field," he said.

When the UNC Board of Governors was vetting the details of Mary Easley's new job and big raise at N.C. State last year, UNC system President Erskine Bowles had conversations with both the first lady and her husband.

Bowles, who met Wednesday with News & Observer editors and reporters, said he had been skeptical of the new job, which has since become entangled in a federal investigation into Mike Easley, the former governor, reports Steve Riley. Bowles said he told James Oblinger, then the N.C. State chancellor, that he would have to "justify every single dollar or we would not approve it."

At one point during the process, Bowles said that Oblinger had given up trying to persuade Bowles and the board to approve the deal. But the chancellor later made another run at it, only to have Mrs. Easley balk at one of Bowles' conditions: That all the documents supporting the $170,000 salary be made public.

"I called her and told her that," Bowles said. "She said she'd get back to me." She did, and the board approved the deal with Bowles' blessing.

Bowles said he had also talked to the former governor at the time. "I told Governor Easley the same thing I just told you: That we were going to treat Mary Easley the same way we would treat everybody else."

More after the jump.

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A policy that guarantees administrators a one-year leave at full pay when they step down from their posts is a critical recruitment tool, the chancellors of five of North Carolina's public universities said Thursday.

The group, which included UNC-Chapel Hill's Holden Thorp and N.C. Central University's Charlie Nelms, defended the 4-year-old "retreat rights" policy Thursday at a workshop for members of the UNC system's Board of Governors. Still, the board will consider scaling back in the coming months.

The policy is one of two under scrutiny for doling out paid leaves to administrators returning to teaching. In the past five years, taxpayers have paid about $8 million to 117 administrators who either returned to the faculty or left the university. In 24 cases, the payouts were for $100,000 or more.

A News & Observer review published Sunday found that these agreements, along with other transitional payments, offered sizable sums of money with few or no strings attached, in at least three cases violated UNC system policies. (N&O)

State legislative leaders recently passed on putting an end to the practice of paying UNC administrators all or part of their administrative salaries as they transitioned back into the faculty.

A provision in the House's version of the budget would have largely prevented anyone in state government from holding on to a higher salary as they moved into a lesser position. The Senate's budget did not have the provision, and when both sides negotiated a final budget that passed last week, the provision was replaced with a study of the practice, Dan Kane reports.

"It was agreed upon by all of us that we would not go forward, and the study would be a good thing," said Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand, a Fayetteville Democrat.

House Minority Leader Paul Stam, an Apex Republican, and Rep. Nelson Dollar, a Cary Republican, chastised budget writers on Monday for dropping the provision. Both cited The News & Observer report on Sunday showing that these transitional payments had cost the state more than $8 million over the past five years.

More after the jump.

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The UNC system has agreed to make public the vacation, sick leave, bonus leave and compensatory time accrued by university employees after an advisory opinion from the state Attorney General's Office said such records are not protected from public scrutiny by the state's personnel law.

The News & Observer had requested the information as part of its "Generous Assembly" series, which took a close look at state spending and tax breaks as lawmakers grapple with a $4.5 billion budget deficit for the upcoming fiscal year, reports Dan Kane.

The UNC system's counsel, Laura Luger, had held off releasing the information because she questioned whether it met the definition of compensation under state personnel law. She also questioned whether leave balances that reflect compensation earned in the past should be public.

The personnel law says that all forms of compensation are public record, but it also says that only the "current" salary can be released.

Chief Deputy Attorney General Grayson G. Kelley sided with The N&O in his opinion. He wrote in a letter on Monday saying that vacation, sick leave, bonus leave and comp time are either benefits or compensation, and a change to the personnel law in 2007 made clear that they are public record.

"Sick leave balances, vacation leave balances, bonus leave balances, and compensatory time accrued are therefore current benefits which should be made available for inspection and copying upon request," Kelley wrote.

The Office of the State Controller, state Treasurer's Office and the State Highway Patrol had provided that information at The N&O's request.