Reform process for picking regents

Hawaii’s Democratic 2006 Legislature undermined then-Republican Gov. Linda Lingle’s authority to appoint University of Hawaii regents six years ago, and Democratic Gov. Neil Abercrombie is understandably frustrated by the lingering muzzle. Legislators should admit the mistake, which has contributed to a feeble regents board, and move to undo the damage.

Several of Lingle’s choices for the Board of Regents were blocked by the Legislature before it created a constitutional amendment that expanded the board from 12 to 15 regents and created an "advisory" screening council with six members — only one named by the governor — to nominate potential regents.

Approved by voters, the system gained the sneer of national accrediting organizations. Lingle responded by legally allowing six regents to remain on the UH board two years beyond the expiration date of their terms.

Perhaps in an attempt to appear nonpartisan, perhaps just as likely an example of overt politicking, the Senate Education Committee rejected two of Abercrombie’s nominees for the regents board last year. The committee suggested that they were not the "best" among the "the other candidates who were put forward" by the screening committee.

Sen. Jill Tokuda, the committee’s chairwoman, expressed concerns about the regent selection process by the screeners for recommendations to the governor. When Abercrombie asked for additional names to consider before making his next nominations for the vacancies, he was refused.

The seemingly benign constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2007 created a screening committee consisting of seven members, one each appointed by the Senate president, House speaker, the governor, the UH faculty union, the student caucus, former regents and the alumni association. Nominees to the board of regents, according to the screeners, "must be able to face up and identify unpleasant realities and to act upon them," a criteria that can be questioned by the current regents’ woefully inadequate response to the Stevie Wonder concert blunder.

That included hours of meetings held behind closed doors as the scandal widened, which did nothing to assuage public concerns but instead fueled them. The regents’ inaction was a partial trigger for the special Senate accountability hearing into the fiasco, proceedings which further revealed UH regents’ penchant for secrecy and evasiveness.

Kitty Lagareta, former chairwoman of the UH regents, had predicted that the constitutional amendment would lead to regent nominees chosen from a series of special interests, "a guarantee that the university would be overseen not by people concerned with its overall well-being but by individuals whose constituencies have nominated them to represent one primary perspective on the Board of Regents."

Indeed, prior to the constitutional amendment’s approval, Richard T. Ingram, then president of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, warned against loading a screening committee with "special interest representatives" who could jeopardize the university’s accreditation.

Creation of the screening committee clearly was caused by partisan politics and now carries the danger of nonpolitical mismanagement and potential harm to UH. Next year’s Legislature should concede as much and return it to the voters for erasure.