A new state law that brings Hawai'i into compliance with federal retirement standards also allows Dobelle to begin receiving the pension immediately after completing two years on the faculty. But it also drops his potential retirement from $42,000 annually to $19,000 a year.

Under the terms of the settlement, Dobelle resigns as president effective Aug. 14 and immediately becomes a non-tenured faculty member in a research capacity for two years.

The pension is among several issues arising from Dobelle's dispute with the Board o f Regents that are coming into clearer focus the week after the settlement was announced Thursday.

In other news:

• Dobelle has waived his privacy rights regarding disclosure of information involving this case.

"Dr. Dobelle supports the public's right to disclosure of public documents regarding the dispute with the Regents," said his attorney, L. Richard Fried, Jr., in a letter to the Office of Information Practices dated Saturday.

Fried's letter noted that Dobelle's waiver "applies to information regarding this dispute" as set out in the settlement documents.

However, Fried noted, "the privacy rights of others clearly may be implicated."

"Dr. Dobelle of course cannot waive privacy rights of others and his waiver should not be so construed," wrote Fried.

Documents that members of the news media have requested from the university include e-mail correspondence among various university constituencies, including the UH Foundation, during the time of the dispute. These e-mails have not yet been turned over to the Office of Information Practices, but office director Leslie H. Kondo expects they will be.

The university legal counsel is currently waiting for official response from Kondo's office regarding whether documents may be made public.

• The university's legal counsel is awaiting final bills from attorneys hired to represent the board in its dispute with Dobelle. Total costs are not yet known, said Carolyn Tanaka, associate vice president for external affairs and a spokeswoman for the university. The board hired two outside law firms to help with mediation, in addition to its university counsel.

• Under terms of the mediated settlement, a research project for Dobelle's coming year as a non-tenured researcher in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning will be created jointly by Dobelle and UH-Manoa chancellor Peter Englert.

Dobelle said project plans will be made next week, when Englert returns from vacation and the two can meet.

• In other news, as chair-elect for Aloha United Way, Dobelle is in line to lead the fund-raising campaign next year, but he said yesterday that without an office or secretarial assistance that plan may have to be altered.

"I'll do what's best for them," he said of the AUW campaign.

Under the state's updated pension law, Dobelle cannot use his $442,000 annual salary as UH president to calculate his "high three" income years, part of the pension formula. That's because the state now uses federal limits, which rose from $170,000 in 2001 to $205,000 in 2004, to set the top three years' salary.

Although the formula is complicated and makes it difficult to tally pension figures, according to ERS officials his "high three" salary would be approximately $190,000.

With five years of service, employees who pay into the pension system can retire at age 55, according to the ERS Web site. Most employees — about 84 percent — do not pay into the system. Dobelle will be 61 after serving two years as a non-tenured faculty researcher.

According to the ERS office, state pensions are not assessed state taxes, but federal taxes must be paid.

The Employees' Retirement System covers more than 97,000 state and city workers, of which about 32,300 are retirees and their beneficiaries.