Aggregated News

California's stem cell agency has agreed to start paying a salary to Chairman Robert Klein, who has served unpaid since the institute began four years ago.

The oversight board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine voted Dec. 10 to give Klein a $150,000 annual salary effective Dec. 8, a pay level it said reflected that the job is a half-time position. It also could award the person who eventually fills the vice chairman position up to $332,000. The board had earlier established a full-time pay range for the chairman position at $275,000 to $508,750. Klein had requested that he start earning a salary.

John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog, a Santa Monica-based group that tracks CIRM policies and spending, said it was "wildly inappropriate" for the board even to consider a salary at the upper end of that range.

Klein and other CIRM officials were not available to comment for this story.

In a Dec. 4 letter to members of the oversight board, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he had "deep concern" about the plan to compensate Klein and the vice...