SACRAMENTO – Angry at the University of California for a lot of reasons, a bipartisan group of state lawmakers has introduced measures to strip the prestigious 10-campus system of its historic constitutional autonomy.

Legislation introduced in the Assembly and Senate seeks to give the Legislature for the first time the ability to exercise direct control over the UC, as it does the California State University system.

“Time and time again UC feels that they should operate outside the purview of this state Legislature, outside the purview of the people of California,” said Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco. “Enough is enough. We are not going to stand for it anymore.”

Yee's remarks drew a searing, pointed response from the university, which dismissed the proposal as “absurd.”

“Given the current $25 billion hole in the state budget and the political paralysis that chronically plagues Sacramento, tossing a 10-campus public research university that is the pride of California and the envy of the world into the Sacramento mix should be a non-starter,” the UC declared in an unattributed statement.

The identical constitutional amendments, SCA 21 and ACA 24, need a two-thirds vote in each house to be placed on a future statewide ballot. Unlike other legislation, the governor's approval is not required.

“This is not about the state running the UC,” Yee said. “We want to provide more direction. . . . We are not going to take over the UC.”

But that's what it sounded like to UC President Mark Yudof.

“I don't think it's exerting a little more control,” Yudof said. “I think it's a takeover. It makes no sense to me. I think we're frankly one of the few remaining gems in California. . . . Everyone says this is the best public university system in the world.”

The UC has been dogged by an executive pay scandal and continues to draw criticism for spending practices, rising student fees and management of its pension fund. For their part, UC officials have blamed fee increases on funding cuts from Sacramento.

Since its inception in 1868, the university has been governed by a Board of Regents, a majority of whom are gubernatorial appointees. The Legislature can and has urged the UC to take certain actions with the implicit threat that defiance could jeopardize its more than $3 billion in state support.

Nonetheless, university officials have angered lawmakers by opposing some of the legislation directed at them, such as a pending bill that would extend the state's whistle-blower-protection law to the UC system.

“What really saddens me is that even when we have a bill that urges them to do something – it does not demand because we can't demand – UC lobbies against that,” Yee said. “They go behind your back. They say they don't lobby, but they do.”

In addition to Yee, the constitutional amendments have been sponsored by Sens. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, and Roy Ashburn, R-Bakersfield, as well as Assemblymen Brian Nestande, R-Palm Desert, and Anthony Portantino, D-La Cañada Flintridge.

Romero, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, is being forced from office next year because of term limits and is running for state superintendent of public instruction. Portantino chairs the Assembly Higher Education Committee. The Democrats are allies of several labor unions that have been at odds with the UC over wages and management of the UC pension fund.

Yee, Ashburn and Nestande suggested the recent hiring of two new UC chancellors at salaries higher than their predecessors may have precipitated the legislative broadside.

Earlier this month, UC regents approved the hiring of chancellors for UC San Francisco and UC Davis at salaries of $450,000 and $400,000, respectively. The UCSF chancellor, Susan Desmond-Hellmann, will be paid 12 percent more than her predecessor. The UC Davis chancellor, Linda Katehi, will make 27 percent more than her predecessor.

At the same meeting, regents approved a 9.3 percent increase in student fees.

“You have to ask the question: Is a chancellor really worth more, for the work that he or she does, than the president of the United States?” Yee said.

President Barack Obama's salary is $400,000 a year.

Ashburn called the chancellors' compensation and benefits packages “exorbitant.”

“It's obvious that leaders of the University of California are out of touch with the real world,” he said.

Nestande, the other Republican sponsor of the legislation, questioned “golden parachutes,” such as the $2.1 million retirement cash-out paid to a UC Berkeley police chief who was later rehired for the same job.

The move to rein in the university comes at a particularly difficult time, when the system faces at least an additional $385 million in budget cuts proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

UC President Yudof defended the recent chancellors' salaries, saying one took a deep pay cut from a previous job and both could have earned much more elsewhere, including at other high-profile universities.

“We got a deep-dish discount, so I don't think we're insensitive,” Yudof said. “We're just trying to keep a great university running, and I think the idea that it can be run better out of Sacramento is really wrong-headed.”

Yudof has attempted to address much of the other criticism since he arrived last June. He downsized the UC Office of the President, eliminating or re-assigning about 500 positions for a net savings of more than $30 million.

He also ordered the university to produce its first comprehensive accountability report, which is available online, and revised policies that allowed UC executives to take six-figure severance packages only to move to similar positions at another UC campus.

Steve Boilard, a higher education specialist with the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office, said the run-up in UC fees reflects budget decisions made in Sacramento, as well as by the regents.

While some compensation decisions have looked “arrogant or politically tone deaf,” Boilard said, there is not much of a connection to fees.

“In terms of scale, they are just so different,” Boilard said. “I think I'd separate the issues. I think the fee decisions are appropriately part of a much broader, negotiated conversation, but that UC's spending decisions are a legitimate issue to be questioned.”