The Commission of Presidents (1993 - 2008)
As shown last time, the PASSHE Commission of
Presidents during fiscal years 1993 through 2008 never carried out its Act 188 mandate¹
which is as follows: “The commission shall
recommend policies for the institutions and shall act in an advisory
capacity to the chancellor and the governors.” (Emphasis added.)
PASSHE’s 14 universities include Bloomsburg, California, Cheyney, Clarion, East Stroudsburg, Edinboro, Indiana, Kutztown, Lock Haven, Mansfield, Millersville, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock and West Chester.
Because of the Commission’s failure to do its
part—by submitting recommendations or offering advice—the Chancellor and Board of
Governors were never called upon during those years to receive or consider any
input whatsoever from the Commission of Presidents.
Now one might think that the Chancellor and Board of Governors would have been disappointed or at least curious about the Commission’s failure to submit helpful recommendations or offer its best advice.
But based on my 20 years as a PASSHE university president, any who might think that would be wrong.
According to what I saw firsthand during that time, the Chancellor and Board of Governors were neither disappointed nor curious about the Commission’s failure to follow the law; in fact, they did everything in their power to discourage the Commission of Presidents from fulfilling its Act 188 mandate.
It became crystal clear to anyone present who was paying attention that the Chancellor and Board of Governors were not interested in hearing what the fourteen presidents might have to say. That’s because in the secret meetings where PASSHE’s key decisions got made, many presidents were seen as political naifs who would embarrass the Board of Governors by suggesting things the Board might have to publicly reject—namely things that might benefit PASSHE students rather than PASSHE officials.
You may recall a similar twenty-year dynamic with regard to predetermined “political budget requests” which PASSHE Chancellors would direct the fourteen presidents to submit every year—so as not to embarrass the politicians by having the Governor reject the more realistic, fact-based budget requests.
At no time during my twenty years as a PASSHE university president did anyone—including the Chancellor, the Board of Governors or, most importantly—the PASSHE Chief Counsel—remind the presidents of the clear language of Act 188 regarding the obligations of the Commission of Presidents.
Under the Commonwealth Attorneys Act,² the PASSHE Chief Counsel is designated as the attorney with the responsibility for making sure that PASSHE operates in accordance with the law. But for the entirety of my twenty-years as a PASSHE university president, every Chief Counsel was totally silent on this issue.
By way of background, the PASSHE Chief Counsel (as well as the attorneys who provide legal advice to the 14 PASSHE universities) report to the General Counsel, who reports directly to the sitting Governor.
While one might expect that PASSHE’s Chief Counsel would make sure that the various provisions of Act 188, including the provision for the Commission of Presidents, would be scrupulously followed, twenty years of evidence exists to show that such an expectation has not in fact been fulfilled!
Perhaps this failure on the part of PASSHE Chief
Counsels shouldn’t be all that surprising when one recalls that Act 188’s most
important provision—PASSHE’s statutory purpose of “High quality education at
the lowest possible cost to the students”—has been ignored by the Board of
Governors since 2002, while PASSHE Chief Counsels have looked on in silence. Could they just be going along to get along?
It is unlikely that the several different attorneys who have served as PASSHE’s Chief Counsel between 1992 and 2012 didn’t notice that the Board of Governors’ focus on its “low tuition for all” policy—rather than on the Act-188 mandated “lowest possible cost” to the students policy—was “contrary to law” and hence by its very definition, “malfeasance.”
But since PASSHE Chief Counsels report to the Governor through the Office of General Counsel (OGC), and sitting Governors benefit politically from being seen by the electorate as “keeping tuition low,” it seems likely that PASSHE Chief Counsels may be motivated to please the politician to whom they report--unfortunately at the expense of PASSHE students from Pennsylvania's least affluent families.
The Commission of Presidents (2009 - 2012)
After 16 years of witnessing first hand that the Commission of Presidents was not functioning at all as mandated by Act 188, I ran for the position of Chair of the PASSHE Commission of Presidents, and was first elected by my colleague presidents in FY2009, eventually serving for a total of four one-year terms.
As the new Chair of the PASSHE Commission of Presidents, I resolved to follow the Act 188 mandate on how the Commission of Presidents was to function. My first step was to schedule, with the presidents’ consent, regular conference call meetings of the Commission of Presidents one full year in advance.
Second, I performed the staff work that was needed to develop a series of draft motions for discussion by all the presidents. As any experienced leader learns, Draft 1 of any key document is the most difficult one to create. But after group discussion of Draft 1, suggestions would be made and those that received consensus support would be incorporated into Draft 2. After several more iterations of this process, the Commission of Presidents would arrive at a version of a motion that could be approved by majority vote.
When one of the presidents asked “How do we know that the Chancellor and Board of Governors will want our recommendations and advice?” My response was this: “Act 188 says what the Commission shall (not may) do; and we haven’t been doing it for the past sixteen years. We need to do what the law says because if we don’t do our part, the Chancellor and Board of Governors can’t do their part either.”
To be continued.
¹ https://www.keepandshare.com/doc/6772880/act188-pdf-405k.
² http://www.ogc.pa.gov/About%20Us/Pages/CommonwealthAttorneysAct.aspx#.VzZmHmTD-mc.
No comments:
Post a Comment