CHAPEL HILL — Every two years, the General Assembly is charged with appointing 16 members to the UNC Board of Governors, half of the board’s 32-seat voting membership. The Board of Governors is invested with great power, and its decisions affect the state’s citizens, especially those with children in the UNC system.
State law tasks the House and Senate each to choose eight members, but it doesn’t stipulate exactly how the selections are to be made. That is left up to the rules adopted by the respective chambers. You might expect that the procedures would be fair and open, but that isn’t the case.
Recently, the process has been conducted under a veil of secrecy that does a disservice to the taxpayers who fund the UNC system to the tune of more than $2 billion annually.
For the most part, the selections are made behind closed doors in non-public meetings before “official” votes on the 16 nominees are taken. This year’s selection process was especially flawed, with exactly 16 nominees left to fill the 16 spaces. That was after the Democratic leadership had eliminated several other candidates for consideration before the vote.
Throughout the process, legislative leaders escort their favored nominees into the offices of other legislators to have private chats. No transcripts of those talks are available. Are the candidates questioned on their views about the important issues facing the UNC system? Members of the public have no way of knowing.
When it comes time for an official vote, some nominees have been eliminated from consideration and all that’s left is to rubber-stamp those the leadership wants. The decision to select new members is essentially left in the hands of four or five people in each chamber.
Is that really how we want members to the Board of Governors chosen? After this year’s vote in the Senate, Sen. Robert Pittenger, R-Mecklenburg, called the process a “kangaroo court.” “The voting procedure employed,” he said, “would be an embarrassment to leaders in most of the world and in all of the free world”
As the saying goes, sunshine is the best disinfectant. Opening up the legislative selection process to public scrutiny would allow for a more honest examination of the individuals who wish to serve on the board . Public hearings instead of private chats, for example, would make it possible for the public to find out what sort of person each candidate is and would minimize the likelihood that someone would be approved just because he has good political connections.
The ballot must include all nominees, and committee chairman or other legislative leaders should be denied power to eliminate candidates from consideration on their own.
Another improvement would be to utilize cumulative voting. With it, each voting senator or representative would have as many votes as there are candidates, and could cast more than one vote for a particular candidate. If there were eight candidates, a senator or representative would have eight votes and could cast them all for one candidate if he chose. That would reduce the likelihood that the majority party’s favorite candidates would all win.
These changes would provide more transparency to the process while also reducing the influence of the majority party over the minority to push through its own slate of candidates.
Also, instead of electing half of the board’s membership every two years, it would be better to elect a quarter each year. It is common for corporations to choose a portion of their boards each year. Annual selection for the Board of Governors would help to focus more attention on it and somewhat reduce the importance of party domination in the legislature.
Finally, as a study sponsored by the Pope Center advocated last spring, the board is too large to be most effective. Instead of the unwieldy membership of 32, having 15 members would be more manageable. While lawmakers are busy improving the procedure for choosing members, they should consider reducing the size of the board.
Those changes would bring about more public awareness about the Board of Governors and inspire confidence that the best candidates are being chosen in a fair and open manner. Our political leaders, of both parties, should see the importance of that.
Shannon Blosser is a staff writer with the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy in Chapel Hill