On Friday, The Daily reported OU General Counsel Anil Gollahalli returned a $38,000 raise that had been approved during the Oct. 27 OU Board of Regents meeting. The 15 percent raise was not included in the regents’ agenda or meeting minutes and may have been a violation of the Open Meeting Act.

The Daily discovered the raise was listed on documents released only to the regents — not the public.

The document listed annual bonuses for Cameron University employees and included Gollahalli’s annual pay raise.

It was not until The Daily began investigating the salary increase that Gollahalli decided to return the raise in an attempt to remain open and transparent.

Gollahalli called The Daily from the regents’ office, which leads us to believe he was not the only one involved with the decision to return the raise.

Gollahalli said he asked for a $38,000 raise because his salary did not meet the national average for legal counsels at similarly sized institutions. While this may be true, we don’t think this is a valid argument when salaried staff at OU have not had across-the-board pay increases in more than three years. One employee asking for a raise “to meet the average” doesn’t seem fair.

We feel the same way about the inflated salary given to former Lt. Gov. Jari Askins, who was appointed to an undefined role at the OU Health Sciences Center on Wednesday. Her salary for being the “associate provost for external relations” matches that of her lieutenant governor salary — about $114,000. In the midst of a budget-cutting year, which has involved hiring freezes and pay cuts, adding positions and giving raises to staff who already make more than $200,000 a year doesn’t seem practical.

Part of Gollahalli’s job as legal counsel is to keep the university from committing open-meeting and open-record violations, and it gives a bad impression of OU’s commitment to transparency that the general counsel was caught at the center of a possible infraction.

To solidify the administration’s commitment to transparency, President David Boren and his colleagues ought to take the Freedom of Information Oklahoma’s Open Government Pledge before each school year. The pledge asks state candidates to “endorse the purpose of Oklahoma’s Open Meeting and Open Records laws to ensure and facilitate the public’s understanding of governmental processes and problems.”

While Boren is not running for office, he is a key public figure in Oklahoma and former politician who should be willing to take this pledge. It may just be a formality, but it would confirm his commitment to an open and honest university.