A foot is as long as the King's foot

At the university, the only thing we love more than inane bureaucratic paperwork is making up acronyms for inane bureaucratic paperwork (IBP). While filling out my 2007-2008 Report of Non-University Activities (RNUA) I noticed this question: "Do you or does any member of your family(2) have a managerial role or a significant(3) financial relationship with a company that does business with the University or with a company in a field of your research?"

Footnote (2) just defines family as spouse or children, which doesn't seem complete enough to avoid the nepotism the form is designed to identify.

Footnote (3) says, "Federal research regulations define "significant" as financial interests exceeding $10,000 or representing more than 5% ownership regardless of dollar value. The State Procurement Code prohibits the award of University contracts to companies in which University employees who earn more than 60% of the Governor's salary have either (a) ownership interests in excess of 7.5% or (b) entitlements to annual income in amounts in excess of the salary of the Governor. (The Governor's salary is $171,000 as of July 1, 2007.)

There are two things that make this significant. One, you need to make more than $102,600 for them to care in the first place and then only if you're important enough to own those interests (at least 7.5% which doesn't seem significant to me,) and only if at the end of the year you make more than the Governor, which is the important thing. You can't make more than the Governor (or make it without reporting it.)

These regulations are weird.