With Klaich gone, it’s time for regents to take charge

Sunday, May 15, 2016 | 2 a.m.

We appreciate Dan Klaich for doing the right thing by resigning Thursday as chancellor of our public institutions of higher education.

Klaich, who has spent 30 years in high-level positions with the Nevada System of Higher Education, had gotten himself in an embarrassing pickle of his own doing. This goes back to 2012, when a committee of lawmakers and other officials was trying to figure out how to make more equitable the formula used to parcel out money to Nevada’s eight public universities and colleges. A consultant hired by Klaich also was weighing in on the deliberations.

Klaich now admits he erred when he asked his staff to prepare a particular memo on behalf of that consultant without acknowledging that collaboration to others. His reasoning was that legislators were leaning on the consultant for more information, but because the consultant said he was unable to promptly respond, Klaich took it upon himself, with staff help, to prepare that memo, as a time-saver.

But here’s where there’s trouble: Klaich told regents Thursday that he emailed the memo to the consultant, who reviewed it, found it accurate, signed off on it and put it on his consultancy letterhead to be sent to legislators. Yet the chancellor’s own emails suggest otherwise. The emails, obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal through a public-records request, describe a scenario in which Klaich’s staff not only wrote the memo sought by legislators, but Klaich himself put it on the consultant’s letterhead without acknowledging his own involvement.

The email string starts with the consultant saying he would be out of pocket for a few days and didn’t have time to write the memo. Klaich responded by email: “No problem. I will just figure out what you would say and put it on your letterhead. :-) I may even generate a bill from you and send it to me.” To which the consultant responded, “Make the bill a big un,” and Klaich retorted, “It will be worth it I assure you.”

It sounds preposterous that a chancellor would so flagrantly cook up such a scheme, but in fact Klaich has a long relationship with that very consultant. It wasn’t long ago that Klaich was found to have personally edited a report from the consultant having to do with NSHE governance, in order to fashion it more favorably toward his office. Ultimately, Klaich effectively buried the report entirely, because its original draft was not flattering toward NSHE’s management of community colleges. In other words, Klaich has a history of big-footing his consultant’s reports, although he would rather have it be characterized as collaboration between consultant and client.

It was no surprise, then, that when word got out that Klaich was again ghost-writing his own consultant’s work product, some legislators became furious. And no wonder. People in academia — including chancellors, of all people! — should understand the utter inappropriateness of writing material that will appear under another person’s name.

Regents called the special meeting Thursday for Klaich to offer his defense. Their own pro-Klaich bias was obvious when they allowed speakers to carry on over the time limit to praise the chancellor, while speakers critical of Klaich were told to stick to the time limit.

For his part, Klaich said the email exchange disclosed by the Review-Journal was only meant as a joke “which no longer seems funny.” In a 20-page letter to regents, part mea culpa and part answers to specific questions, Klaich said “that of course I would never ‘just figure out what Mr. Jones would say and put it on his letterhead.’” He added that he regretted having his staff prepare the memo in the first place and said he should have pressed the consultant to write it himself.

Two lawyers working for NSHE — one reporting to the executive staff and the other to regents — agreed Thursday that Klaich did nothing that would warrant his being fired for cause. Maybe regents had become accustomed to Klaich’s tinkering with his consultant’s reports. But it was easy for others to worry that Klaich was trying to get his own way by pulling another fast one.

Out of all this, Klaich says he has learned “to be more careful, disciplined and respectful in my email communications. One of the dangers of quick email communications is the lack of context and tone. Humor is often not evident in emails.” He should be more concerned that he found nothing untoward in being a ghostwriter for his own consultant.

And with that, Klaich acknowledged he had become a “distraction” and offered Thursday to resign effective June 2. Regents accepted it, allowing him his full contract through June 2017 that will bring him another $335,000 in salary and allowances. In fact, regents had little choice but to cut bait with Klaich if they hoped to restore any confidence that the Legislature should have in the NSHE executive office.

The regents must now focus on the job at hand as they mount a search for a new chancellor. They must provide stewardship over a collection of campuses that are at their own crossroads, and take stock of their own responsibilities rather than relegate them to a chancellor. For starters, the regents should return to an organization chart in which campus presidents and the chancellor all report directly — and as equals — to them. And the next chancellor must understand that his or her job is as an administrator in support of our colleges and universities, not some lord who reigns over his subjects. And the job of hiring and firing campus presidents should be returned to regents, not the chancellor, who, when allowed that power, wields inappropriate political control over the presidents who operate the institutions.

For too long, regents have allowed themselves to be kowtowed by chancellors with strong personalities. It’s time for regents to recognize and step up to the roles for which they are elected, and for the next chancellor to understand that any funny business won’t be tolerated.