David Michael Miller
Thank you, Republicans in the state Legislature.
I rarely get to say that. On those occasions when I do, I’m wallowing in the deepest depths of sarcasm.
Without a trace of irony, I want to thank the folks who run our Legislature for rejecting Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to transform the UW System into a quasi-independent public authority where power would have rested with the unelected Board of Regents.
One of those regents, David Walsh, pointed out several problems with the public authority plan. Walsh, who helped create the UW Hospital’s public authority, tore into the tight timetable and the lack of detail.
“The hospital authority took two years to draft. The merger of the System took three years. It may be a good idea, but I don’t think we have all the information,” said Walsh at a Board of Regents meeting in March.
Walsh listed potential costs a public authority could create for the UW System — increased liability for lawsuits, new fees for municipal services. It was a measured, rational response from Walsh, a man whose expertise in public policy law is matched only by his passion for the state’s university system.
The Legislature declined to move forward on creating a public authority, not because of Walsh’s rational critiques, but because it doesn’t want to give up control over setting tuition rates. Many members were also unhappy when the Board of Regents voted to protect tenure and shared governance, two foundations of employee policy slated to be removed from state law.
Even if I disagree with lawmakers’ reasons for rejecting the public authority, I am glad they did it. I prefer a public university where ultimate power rests with elected officials rather than political appointees. Regents are appointed by the governor to serve seven-year terms. As this is Walker’s fifth year as governor/guy who visits Wisconsin between fundraising stops, he has appointed the vast majority of the current board.
David Walsh, the regent who made all of those fiscally and legally prudent points, is now finished with his term. He has been replaced by the son of Walker’s former campaign chairman.
The new regent is Michael M. Grebe, the son of Michael W. Grebe. The elder Grebe is also the head of the Bradley Foundation, a powerful Milwaukee-based conservative group that works to promote school vouchers and gut the social safety net. The Bradley Foundation diverts funds through countless other groups, keeping their actions relatively quiet. When the Legislature held hearings on right-to-work legislation, seven different organizations that received Bradley Foundation funding spoke in favor of the bill.
The Bradley Foundation already has immense lobbying power in the state. If a public authority had come to pass, the foundation would have had a direct nepotistic vote on the day-to-day operations of the UW System.
Sure, conservatives control the show with either the Legislature or the Board of Regents at the helm. But the way the Legislature runs helps to protect the university to an extent.
Legislative sessions are more transparent. When the Legislature takes action, it is covered by almost all local media outlets. Votes are taken by elected representatives who are accountable to the voters in regular elections. By contrast, regent meetings are quiet, covered by a few reporters whose stories rarely make the first page. It is hard to hold the nearly anonymous regents accountable for their votes.
It is also much harder — even in this era of one-party control — to pass a bill than it is to make a vote at a board meeting. Any bill to change our universities is going to be relatively big, if only to make it worth all the effort.
But what the regents could have done, particularly with appointees like Grebe, is slowly chip away at such statutory protections as tenure over the course of years. Individually, these adjustments would be ignored — a small adjustment to shared governance here, a tiny change to the tenure track there — but the impact would build over time. The old academic protections would still exist in name, but they would be a shadow of their former selves.
There’s no good situation for the UW System at the moment. But, given the options, I’d rather deal with the democratically elected devil I know.
Alan Talaga co-writes the Off the Square cartoon with Jon Lyons and blogs at Isthmus.com/news/madland.