Ricardo Azziz To receive One Year Leave and $1.1 Million Severance Package

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2 min read

Last updated September 28, 2026

We recently reported Ricardo Azziz had resigned as president of Georgia Regents University. The Augusta Chronicle is now reporting he will get a year of paid leave plus a one time payment of $470,000 with a total package worth $1.1 million.

You can see the details of his severance here: Transition Plan for Dr. Ricardo Azziz (.pdf)

Azziz will leave the president’s office on June 30 and the following day with begin his 12 months of education leave with a rate of pay of $673,379. That money will come from the health system. The plan was dated Wednesday, a day before Azziz announced his resignation and it was accepted by the University System of Georgia Board of Regents.

In addition to receiving tenure, Chancellor Hank Huckaby will recommend that Azziz be granted the rank of Regents Professor beginning July 1. During this year of “education leave,” he will receive institutional support, including part-time secretarial support, and the school’s faculty practice will “provide discretionary funds for academic-related expenses,” according to the plan. The agreement has also been approved by the Board of Regents and is now in effect, a spokesman confirmed.

Comments under the story show a relief that Azziz was out and speculated he was only ever hired as a lackey to take the heat for the merger and name change and now that this has been completed he has served his usefulness and will be rewarded.

Just in case you are confused as a Georgia taxpayer allow me to simplify things for you. An overpaid bureaucrat named Huckaby who receives well over $500,000 a year worked out a deal with a president of a PUBLIC university and paid him $1.1 million to quit his job. While on paid leave he will get an office and secretary and even expenses. The reason I emphasized public is due to the fact that few CEO’s of companies in Georgia make that amount of money and yet here we have bureaucrats and an unelected Board of Regents throwing away a cool mil on a guy that just up and decided to quit his job with no reason given other than he wants to get back to his education roots. Don’t you just love the way Huckaby and our Board of Regents love to throw away our money on crap like this? If you wonder why teachers in classrooms have to buy their own supplies or never get raises this is a great example why.  Trickle down edurat economics at it’s finest.

Clear now? 😡