On Dec. 4, the Supreme Court entered an order in Hanabusa v. Lingle requiring the governor to appoint six regents under Act 56, the legislation that implemented the 2006 constitutional amendment.

She appointed five: Ramon de la Pena, professor of agronomy; Mark Fukunaga, CEO of Servco Pacific; Chuck Gee, former dean of the Travel Industry Management School; Eric Martinson, principal of Tradewind Capital Group; and Grant Teichman, political science student.

These five names will be submitted to the Senate for consent when it convenes on Jan. 21. They'll be considered in due course, but can sit as regents before confirmation.

There will then be 14 regents, still one short.

The appointment of the sixth regent has taken us back to court. The governor has advised the court that all but one of the candidates for this seat have withdrawn. She apparently doesn't like the one remaining candidate and wants the court to have the Regents Candidate Advisory Council provide more names.

THE GAMES CONTINUE

In a court memorandum filed last week, the Senate argued that the governor should not be permitted to benefit by her own procrastination, that an ample list of candidates was given to her last spring, and that if she has only one candidate left it's because she engaged in the "hold over" ploy at the end of the 2008 session.

While this argument has some appeal, it would make for hard law. It is perhaps more likely that the court will require the CAC to provide more names and will set a short time period for getting this done. Gov. Linda Lingle must respond to the Senate's memo by Wednesday, and I expect we'll see a decision shortly.

It's not a surprise that the board of regents has been frozen in the headlights for months, awaiting the results of this case. The minutes for meetings have not been posted since September and the meeting for January has been canceled.

Now, the board can function again. With 14 regents, it needs seven for a quorum and can be confident they can conduct business. They are not likely to be disabled by the lack of one regent. Indeed, this will be easier than living with the Lingle "holdovers," when they had to worry that everything they were doing could be set aside. We should still be concerned, however, about the actions they took during that period.

PRESIDENCY AT ISSUE

Why all this fighting — what is really at stake here? Control of the regents carries with it the power to select and supervise the president of the university — in effect, the power to control the entire institution. Lingle has been mindful of that process — it operated in getting rid of Evan Dobelle and then in selecting and extending David McClain.

Politics and control have played a significant role for both of these presidents. Hopefully, our next president will be less vulnerable to political influence and more receptive to the interests of faculty, students, alumni and retirees, rather than politicians.

The confluence is that McClain is now leaving. He will be going when his $416,000 per year contract expires in July. He has already moved out of the president's house on College Hill to allow renovations for the next president, whoever that may be. The die is cast. It's over and we need to get somebody else.

So often, we start out with a national search but wind up with a local candidate, as in the selection of McClain himself. Since his departure is only six months away, the regents are already behind the curve and the search committee has its work cut out for it.

It's unlikely that the search committee can find a worthy candidate by July. Some of the talent they might want might not want them. After all, we do carry the stigma of the sudden and unexplained termination of Dobelle. We now also carry the stigma of this battle for control of the board of regents. We are not without our baggage, and to compensate for that we'll have to compensate well.

NEW ENERGY NEEDED

It's time not only for ho'oponopono, but for new energy. In the struggle over control during the Lingle administration, certain damage has been done, and certain principles have emerged. The more autonomous the university can be, the better off it will be. The more fundraising it can do, the healthier it will be. The more it pays faculty, the better the teaching will be. And, as we have also found, the more non-political the regents and the president are, the better everything will be.

For one thing, it's time to get going again on Kaka'ako. The vision of Ed Cadman, former dean of the medical school, for a biotech campus has been locked in amber. We need to resume and complete the work on JABSOM II (the medical school incubator and research building), the RBL (the Regional Biosafety Laboratory) and the CRC (the Cancer Research Center) — three major university projects planned for Kaka'ako that have been all but abandoned during this administration. Surely, McClain's successor will be able to restart those projects. If nothing is done, condos will wash over everything, like the Red Sea.

Whatever happened to Dobelle's vision for an extended campus neighborhood at Puck's Alley? Manoa is still a hodgepodge. The maintenance is a travesty, the architecture is unsightly, and except for the Shidler College of Business, nothing memorable has been renewed or built in a while. With a billion-dollar budget, you'd think there would be constant renewal in Manoa, but that's not the case. We've got to rebuild Manoa if we want its constituents to care for it.

A CROSSROADS

This regrettable chapter is mostly behind us. The skirmishes were disruptive, but we should now strive for new excellence and a clarified autonomy from government. The university is our darling, and we should cherish it as never before. But we should also be sure to protect it from any recurrence of this kind of unpleasantness.

The 2006 amendment was a great statement by the voters. Although it took some years, it's now clear, with the help of the decision in Hanabusa v. Lingle, that the voters meant what they said, and that the constitution means what it says. The university is at a crossroads of finding new and unhindered leadership. Our glass is half full. Opportunities abound.

Things are coming up roses.

Jay Fidell is a business lawyer practicing in Honolulu. He has followed tech and tech policy closely and is a founder of ThinkTech Hawaii. Check out his blog at www.HonoluluAdvertiser.com/Blogs