Posted on: Sunday, September 26, 2004
COMMENTARY
Regents selection needs to be modernized
By John Griffin
At a public brainstorming session early in his now-aborted tenure as University of Hawai'i president, I asked Evan Dobelle about proposals to improve the way UH regents are selected. He nodded, maybe smiled, and commented that was a "second term" topic.
Dobelle may be gone, but more than ever, "regents reform" continues to be a present-term issue that should be addressed.
This is not a column about this year's Dobelle firing-resignation debacle. Among other things, debate continues whether he failed "Locals 101," not appreciating the Hawai'i style of doing things — or if that is really the issue.
(My own feeling is that this most experienced political person at least failed "Local Politics 101." In fact, I was tempted to compare how Dobelle went over locally with the smooth style in the mid-1960s of UH President Tom Hamilton, another East Coast agent of change. Hamilton won wide acceptance as he accomplished much in modernizing UH. But that is history.)
Now the challenge at UH is to take the best of recent years and move ahead with repairing the worst. In that, the university is lucky to have acting President David McClain, an East Coast product who has academic credentials, administration achievements and a style that fits Hawai'i.
Four years ago I wrote that while the university was getting the autonomy it needed, it also should improve the quality and qualifications of the regents, who, after all, oversee Hawai'i's single most important institution.
At the time, the complaint was that we had a "stealth board" that let then-President Ken Mortimer take the heat in budget cuts and other controversies. Since then, we have had other governance problems big enough for the present board to be called "dysfunctional" in an outside review.
But this is not meant to be especially critical of Gov. Linda Lingle or the present regents. As I see it, they are performing in the partisan political traditions of four decades of Democrats and the old business-political Republican establishment before that.
Some former regents warn me that politics will always be some part of the system, and that is not always bad. Yet they also seem to agree that governing the university is too important to be determined by partisan politics, even when mellowed by good intentions and the occasional great choice by a governor.
Hawai'i is not alone in the need for regents reform. The hunt for better systems has been going on nationally for a century or longer.
Research abounds.
Some of the ideas I see:
• Establish a special commission to screen potential regents and provide the governor with a list of three choices for each appointment. The model could be the state's Judicial Selection Commission, a body which can suffer from excessive politics at times but has still worked better than the alternatives. But instead of just letting the governor and legislative leaders name members of any regents selection commission, maybe a group could be named by others as well — including one each from UH faculty, students, unions, business and professional groups, and alumni.
• Don't require any political party affiliation or quotas. Keep faculty and students off the board. • Provide better indoctrination and more job training for new regents. Stagger terms and make them longer, maybe 10 years, to provide better continuity and reduce the influence of any one governor. • Eliminate any residency requirements. Recruit the best candidates, including a few from outside Hawai'i. Find people with enough time to do the homework, which is not easy. As I wrote in that previous column: "Be elitist, but screen out the egomaniacs."
• Resist any moves for an elected board of regents, an idea as bad as electing judges. Like judges, regents aren't akin to elected legislators. Think fiduciary responsibility, like Kamehameha Schools or the Campbell Estate.
• Don't pay regents, or just give them a nominal sum for attending meetings. • Consider the idea of separate boards of regents for community colleges and maybe for UH-Hilo and West O'ahu. Also be prepared to reject that idea if it gets too complicated or mixed up with the separate proposals for several boards of education.
It seems to me that modernizing the regents selection process as a follow-on to autonomy is doable in the next two years. Bills have been introduced on this in recent years, and several key Democrats are reported interested in holding hearings next session.
However, it shouldn't be a partisan proposition. In fact, Lingle, who will have her own majority on the board, could both look good and improve the university by helping lead the way to reform.
John Griffin is former editor of The Advertiser's editorial pages and a frequent contributor.
