Through 13 hours of punishing hearings and a 32-page report that followed, a state Senate committee investigating the University of Hawaii’s Stevie Wonder concert scam vented its displeasure at the UH Board of Regents for poor leadership in resolving the fiasco.
If legislators aren’t satisfied with the quality of regents, however, they have nobody to blame but themselves.
Until 2006 the 15 regents were appointed directly by the governor subject to Senate confirmation — similar to the system for appointing the state Board of Education.
It’s a clean and time-tested system that gives the governor a fair chance of assembling a cohesive group with complementary skills that represents all segments of the community.
Senate confirmation is adequate check and balance, and if the regents mess up, accountability goes straight to the governor.
Which is why it was perplexing that the Legislature pushed through an ill-advised and politically motivated constitutional amendment six years ago that forced the governor to appoint regents from a list provided by a seven-member advisory committee accountable to nobody.
The main aim of Democratic lawmakers was to handcuff former Republican Gov. Linda Lingle by stripping her of any meaningful role in the process.
Advisory panel members are appointed by the governor, the Senate president, the House speaker and campus interests representing faculty, students, alumni and ex-regents.
Then-UH President David McClain called the panel a "Noah’s Ark" of special interests, and the national organization that accredits universities derided the change as bad practice.
But lawmakers were determined to tie Lingle’s hands, and they allowed the panel to give the governor as few as two choices for each regent opening; the norm for such committees is to provide four to six candidates.
It led to a ridiculous situation last year when Gov. Neil Abercrombie didn’t like any of the few choices given him for two regents seats but was turned down when he asked for more candidates. He appointed from what he had, and the Senate rejected both nominees as ill-qualified.
Earlier, one of the two candidates provided Lingle by the panel withdrew, and the Supreme Court refused her request for a replacement, leaving the governor with a single choice.
The new system was a bad idea enacted for the wrong reasons, and the "Wonder blunder" has exposed the predictable result: a hodgepodge of poorly matched regents who don’t understand their jobs, are obsessively secretive and can’t act decisively.
And with zero accountability deliberately built into the system, nobody — not the governor, not the Legislature, not the voters — can touch the regents or selection panel.
If legislators want to fix what’s wrong with UH, they should start by correcting their awful misjudgment and restoring the previous system for regent selection, which was never broken.
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Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com or blog.volcanicash.net.
