Whom do you trust? Not NSHE or the regents

By Robert Lang, David Damore and William Brown

Tuesday, July 28, 2020 | 2 a.m.

The recent special session pleased no one.

With tax revenues collapsing due to the fallout from the COVID-19-induced recession, legislators faced no-win decisions about what to cut. As the session unfolded and representatives from state agencies were being grilled about their finances, it became clear that higher education was in for a rough ride. It is never a good sign when Assemblywoman Maggie Carlton, chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, asks if your agency has “any other accounts we don’t know about?”

Undoubtedly, long-lingering concerns about transparency and trust factored into why higher education received the brunt of budget cuts relative to other state agencies, including deeper-than-expected reductions in campuses’ operational support and the elimination of state funding for building projects.

At last Thursday’s Nevada Board of Regents meeting, after a summary of reductions was presented, Board Chair Mark Doubrava and Regent Trevor Hayes took umbrage with the Legislature. In the regents’ telling, the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE) is a paragon of transparency, and higher education was singled out because legislators are so poorly informed that their ignorance leads to suspicions and mistrust.

Perhaps forgetting that all of the finalists for the chancellor’s position had been asked what they would do to repair NSHE’s relationship with the Legislature, Doubrava went so far as to suggest that instead of legislators trying to increase oversight of higher education by proposing to remove the regents from the state constitution, the constitution should be amended to eliminate the Legislature.

Cognizant that the Legislature is not going anywhere, Regent Lisa Levine cautioned her colleagues about the wisdom of attacking an institution that controls the state’s purse strings. She then suggested that, like it or not, people don’t trust the system “to do the right thing” with state funds.

Recent history fuels these perceptions.

Consider that despite a hiring freeze implemented by Gov. Steve Sisolak in response to the budget shortfall, the regents pushed ahead with the searches to replace the chancellor and the presidents of UNLV and UNR, the three highest-compensated jobs in the system, while also paying the current chancellor through December.

During contract negotiations with the new chancellor, Levine, hoping to demonstrate some austerity, proposed eliminating car and housing allowances. Her request was rebuffed. Meanwhile, starting in the fall, students will be subject to a regent-imposed per-credit surcharge.

Then there is the regents’ acquiescence in the face of repeated scandals and bad-faith efforts under the leadership of former NSHE chancellor Dan Klaich. After media reports revealed that NSHE submitted a document to a legislative committee justifying an NSHE-supported structure for the funding formula that was falsified to appear as if it had been written by an independent consulting firm, Klaich was not fired for cause. Instead, he was allowed to resign with the regents paying out the remainder of his contract. To date, the regents have never revisited the topic. As a consequence, the corrupt formula remains in place.

During the 2017 legislative session that followed Klaich’s departure, the Legislature approved Assembly Joint Resolution 5, which called for the regents to be removed from the constitution, and introduced a host of bills seeking to reform higher education. After the session, interim chancellor John White warned that legislators were distrustful of regents and NSHE, and that they did not want to hear from system representatives or trust the data provided by senior staff.

When then-Gov. Brian Sandoval and legislators provided $25 million for the UNLV medical education building to match a philanthropic donation, regents complained that resources were being directed to a project that was not an NSHE priority. Three years later, with the project under the control of a nonprofit development corporation, the state funding was stripped.

During the 2019 legislative session, NSHE and the regents again faced headwinds. The session began with legislators quickly repassing AJR 5, thus sending the proposed constitutional amendment to the voters this November. At the bill’s hearing before the Assembly Legislative Operations and Elections Committee, Board Chair Kevin Page and Vice Chair Jason Geddes testified “neutral,” as the board had failed to take a position on the measure prior to the session. When it became clear that Page was testifying in opposition, the committee chair, Sandra Jauregui, stopped him. The incident was an embarrassment and further weakened the regents’ credibility with legislators.

Also in 2019, the Legislature eliminated the Knowledge Fund (which supported applied research at UNR and UNLV) and denied NSHE’s request for $20 million to help UNLV and UNR sustain their Carnegie R1 status as research institutions. Legislators then allocated $20 million for a much-needed engineering building at UNLV, even though the project was not a high priority for regents. Like funding for the medical education building, state support for the project was swept, leaving UNLV on the hook to pay off a $20 million bond for an engineering building that does not exist.

So while the regents may be indignant about the cuts to higher education, much of the reductions stem from self-inflicted wounds via a governance and administrative structure badly in need of reform. Indeed, as recent legislative sessions attest, higher education’s current leadership has become a detriment to students as well as the state’s economic development and diversification efforts.

Robert Lang is the Lincy endowed chair in Urban Affairs and executive director of the Lincy Institute and Brookings Mountain West, David Damore is a professor and chair of political science at UNLV, and William Brown is the UNLV director of Brookings Mountain West.