The Arizona Board of Regents reviewed and approved the Annual Personnel Report for the Arizona University System at its meeting last Friday in Tempe. The report is required by state statute.

Before approving it, the regents discussed how best to send a message to the Legislature that the state's three universities need more money for faculty salaries and retention issues.

"I believe that our basis of argument is flawed. The argument that we need more salaries because our peers have more salaries is a useless argument," said ASU President Michael Crow.

"We want to tell the governor and the Legislature right now exactly how bad off we are," said regents president-elect Gary Stuart.

Some regents questioned why the Legislature deemed it necessary to file the Annual Personnel Report when they never seem to act on the information it contains, and the information becomes bleaker each passing year.

"What we feel is not concern. What we feel is alarm," Likins said.

The Legislature already knows that people are underpaid and will simply say that everyone is underpaid in these trying times, said Boice. He suggested trying a new tactic.

For example, if a prospective faculty member could also end up bringing research money to a university, regents should point that out to the Legislature in order to get the funding to pay that person a good salary, he said.

"We can tell them, 'If you give us this, then we get this because of it,'" he said.