ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 8, 1996 TAG: 9611080043
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-17 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: THOMAS O'BRIEN and KEVIN McCORMACK
MEMBERS OF the state's most important education policy-making boards, controlling the future of our higher-education institutions, are appointed on the basis of their political connections to whichever party controls the governor's office at a particular time.
This partisanship creates swings in ideology, as each new governor appoints members to carry out a particular agenda. It often results in gridlock when succeeding administrations appoint members who have vastly different ideologies.
The process cries out for a total overhaul. The future of our educational institutions is far too important to be left to the vagaries of partisan politics.
The recent flood of changes in university governing boards illustrates the partisan nature of appointments. Incoming members appointed by Gov. George Allen include Lawrie F. Rollison to the governing board of Old Dominion University. Rollison is the wife of Republican Del. Jack Rollison.
Another political appointee is James W. Beamer, who was recently appointed to the State Council of Higher Education. Beamer spent his last day on the job as a special assistant to Allen for legislative liaison the same day his appointment was announced to the state governing board.
The partisan tradition continued with the appointment of Colorado resident Holland H. Coors to the governing board of the College of William and Mary. The Coors family is one of the most powerful financial supporters of the conservative political agenda nationally.
The flood of outgoing Democratic appointees was studded with those whose appointments were just as obviously based on partisan political alliances. Outgoing Democratic members of the governing board of the College of William and Mary included former U.S. Sen. William B. Spong Jr.; James Murray Jr., son of a former Democratic legislator; and James Vergara Jr., former head of the Democrat's 4th District Committee. Outgoing members of the governing board of Virginia State University included Roger Gregory, a law partner of former Gov. Douglas Wilder.
A bipartisan selection committee would guarantee that candidates are selected for these positions solely on the basis of merit, regardless of political affiliation or connections.
Currently, each board is selected by the governor alone over the course of a four-year term in office, thereby allowing a single governor to control the entire makeup of the state's education governing boards. When any one governor selects the entirety of each board, the boards can be packed by an administration bent on an agenda that is extremely liberal or extremely conservative.
A bipartisan selection committee would eliminate this possibility by providing highly qualified individuals esteemed by both political parties and who are consensus-builders rather than partisan foot soldiers with political agendas.
Republicans and Democrats could appoint an equal number of members to the selection committee (two members of each party, for example). These members could then name an odd number of members from the general public to fill the remaining committee positions. This would ensure that, in any instance in which the partisan members of the committee are deadlocked, the balance of authority is held by its nonpartisan members.
The beauty of this bipartisan reform is the flexibility that this proposal allows. It can be designed so the legislators either can ensure that new board members are attuned to political concerns (by weighting the selection committee toward political members, for example, four Republicans, four Democrats and one or three nonpartisan members), or alternatively, can depoliticize the process by weighting the nominating boards toward nonpartisan members (for example, two Republicans, two Democrats and five nonpartisan members).
Besides eliminating partisan concerns from the nomination process, a selection committee would reduce the phenomenal demands on a governor's time that the current system imposes.
To further insulate Virginia's higher-education governing boards from the changing political winds from Richmond, the current method of staggering board members' terms should be reformed. The current system of four-year terms allows each board to be appointed by a single administration. This allows the governing boards to be controlled by the agenda of one administration.
One immediate way to improve the system would be to better stagger the terms of board members in order to guarantee longer-term leadership and more insulation from any particular political agenda.
The question is whether it is wise to have radical changes railroaded through boards of visitors, only to have them repealed with equal swiftness by the succeeding governor. A more careful policy would allow members to serve one or two six-year terms. This would guarantee greater consistency and insulate our universities from competing political agendas in Richmond.
Thomas O'Brien is director for research at Horizon Institute for Policy Solutions, an independent, nonprofit research organization in Charlottesville. Kevin McCormack is a researcher at the institute.
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