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SB 270 compromise, moves to a vote and quick appointments to board

6/27/2013: The legislative website has the amendments, here. Saul Hubbard of the RG explains the deal:

Addressing a key sticking point, the bill now requires one student seat, one faculty seat and one classified-employee staff seat on each 11- to 15-­member university board. The student seat would have voting rights, while the governor would make the determination about whether faculty and classified staff board members could vote. Classified staff are non-faculty non-management employees. …

For UO and PSU, board appointments would occur this summer, subject to confirmation by the state Senate in September. 

Cannon said he expects the governor to consult with university presidents, foundations, faculty, students groups and others before making recommendations on those appointments.

I’m sure potential board members have been lobbying Cannon for at least a year. I’m on the UO Senate, we haven’t heard a word about potential members, and I assume we’ll have no effective input, as usual. Looking at the UO Foundation, the most likely outcome is board dominated by sports boosters like current chair Steve Holwerda. But maybe Kitzhaber will make a few decent appointments, and this won’t be entirely about sports.

I still haven’t had a response from Gottfredson’s Chief of Staff Greg Rikhoff on whether the board’s initial meetings will be open to the public. A loophole in Oregon’s public meetings law would potentially let them meet in secret, until they actually get rule-making authority in July 2014. 

2 Comments

  1. Frank Stahl 06/29/2013

    This letter was sent to the RG, but is unlikely to be published because of their quota system.
    The report (6-27 RG) on the progress of SB 270, regarding institutional boards for Oregon universities, was an expected disappointment. By failing to provide legal protection for the UO Constitution, and constitutions of other campuses, the Oregon Senate has jeopardized the historic role of the Faculty in university internal governance. As a consequence of this inaction, local boards can grant total freedom to Presidents to ignore the Faculty while acting on behalf of the personal interests of Board Members. This inaction is an apparent consequence of UO President Gottfredson’s unwillingness to seek appropriate amendment of SB 270. In anticipation of this outcome, a notice of motion calling for a vote of “no confidence” was announced to the UO Senate, as reported in their Minutes of the meeting of May 22 (available on line at the UO Senate web site). Such a motion, likely to be acted on by the UO Senate in the Fall, recognizes a failure of presidential leadership that threatens to haunt the UO for a long time.

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