After more than two months of controversy, split support and retracted votes, the Board of Regents decided to push back reconsideration of the issue of approving salary adjustments for top University of Wisconsin System leaders and executives.

The issue was to come under review again at the regents’ meeting this Friday, but President Toby Marcovich pulled the proposal from the meeting after UW System president Katharine Lyall requested the issue to be set aside for a later date.

Lyall sent a letter to Marcovich Tuesday about the matter, stating that she feels the proposal and its surrounding controversy is distracting the board from more pertinent and necessary issues, such as finding chancellor replacements at UW-Milwaukee and UW-Stevens Point.

Lyall, along with other board members, supported an alteration in executive salaries in light of the loss of these two chancellors to out-of-state, higher-paying jobs. They worried this would become a continual trend if salaries were not increased.

Regent Mark Bradley, chairman of the Regent Business and Finance Committee, released a report Friday stating that UW System executives’ salaries are indeed behind those of their peers.

Nonetheless, legislators, students and administrators fired criticism at the board for approving the proposal, saying that in an economically unstable time, such increases should come second to student and university needs.

The approval was nullified after Wisconsin attorney general Peg Lautenschlager found the board in violation of the state’s open-meetings law when it conducted the vote via a barely publicized teleconference.

Marcovich still maintains that the salary adjustments are necessary, but it is not certain when the issue will come under review next.