David Shapiro: Don’t let UH become a plaything for pernicious politicians

I wrote last week arguing for term limits on state legislators: “Some amass money and power over decades, lording over state agencies like personal fiefdoms — often acting out of favoritism or grudge.”

Sens. Donovan Dela Cruz, Donna Mercado Kim and Michelle Kidani proved the point with their ill-received calls for University of Hawaii President David Lassner to step down.

Honolulu Star-Advertiser education writer Esme Infante reported that Dela Cruz, the Ways and Means Committee chair, said Lassner “has run his course. He’s been there 10 years; that’s kind of long already.”

Incredible gall from a 13-year senator who resists term limits and plans to stick around a lot longer, judging from the $945,719 in special-interest money stashed in his campaign fund.

Kim is a serial abuser of UH presidents over 23 years in the Senate, having now called for the resignations of three of the past four after subjecting them to noxious bullying before her Higher Education Committee.

She accused Lassner of “lacking the vision and the confidence of the university as far as moving forward,” comments she and the others tried to tamp down after blowback from Lassner’s defenders, including the full Hawaii congressional delegation and the head of the UH faculty union.

Hawaii’s Constitution gives the UH Board of Regents and the president it appoints broad independence and “exclusive jurisdiction over the internal structure, management, and operation of the university.”

The Legislature’s role is “laws of statewide concern,” but Kim, Dela Cruz and Co. have sought to run UH from their committees, micromanaging to the point of dictating the hiring and firing of individual faculty and staff — enforced by threats to squeeze the UH budget, and by extension its students.

After Kim called for former President M.R.C. Greenwood’s resignation, the Legislature took the unusual step of refusing to fund negotiated faculty pay raises, putting her in an untenable budgetary bind.

After she left, the funding was restored. Look for a similar play on Lassner if other senators don’t grow the backbones to rein in this power-tripping trio.

Lawmakers over the decades have been “starving the whole university system,” as state Rep. Amy Perruso put it, by forcing it to operate less on general funds and more on tuition revenue.

Because of the toxic politics, the past several openings for UH president have drawn few applicants. Lassner deserves credit for calmly standing up for UH while taking the grief for refusing to kiss the legislative rings.

The Senate must stop letting empire builders like Kim, Dela Cruz and Kidani run our precious state university aground with endless drama, disrespect and disruption.

A thriving UH is essential to all the ways we hope to make Hawaii better; we can’t afford to be a state like Florida where lawmakers treat universities like political toys and try to dictate every aspect of their operations.

Three generations of my family graduated from UH. Alumni are tired of our degrees being devalued by the cheap shots of politicians who, in this case, all graduated from mainland universities.

Let the Legislature stick to the bigger picture intended by the Constitution, give UH a fair budget, and free regents and Lassner to do their jobs.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.