Friday, Sept. 3, 2004 | 11:13 a.m.
Interim Chancellor Jim Rogers has selected Assemblyman-turned-lobbyist Josh Griffin, R-Henderson, and Nevada Resort Association lobbyist Tim Crowley to serve as the higher education system's chief advocates in the 2005 Legislature.
"I think they are very competent," Rogers said Thursday. "I think they'll do what the system needs done."
The two men will be paid $120,000 for the year to lobby state lawmakers on behalf of the system's needs, Rogers said.
Attorneys for the University and Community College System are still working out the rest of the details, such as whether the pair will be charged with finding space to house the institutional representatives.
In an earlier memo Rogers restricted the system's eight institutions from sending individual lobbyists to the Legislature after infighting in the last session led to confusion among lawmakers. This year Rogers said he wants to make sure the system acts with one voice and lobbies only for issues approved by the Board of Regents.
According to the policy set by Rogers, the individual institutions will be able to send representatives to help Griffin and Crowley, but will be allowed in the Legislature only when directed by them to give information to lawmakers.
Neither Griffin nor Crowley was available Thursday night for comment.
Griffin decided earlier this year not to run for re-election in order to open his own lobbying firm and spend more time with his family.
Rogers said he expects to finish the contract sometime next week. The appointment does not need regent approval because regents in March authorized the chancellor to oversee the system's lobbyists.
Rogers said he did, however, discuss the lobbyist appointment and the system's goals for the upcoming Legislature with Regents Chairman Stavros Anthony and Vice Chairwoman Jill Derby Thursday morning.
The two regents and Rogers met in an effort to improve relations between the board and the chancellor after Rogers sent a memo Tuesday that inflamed tensions.
In a blunt memo, Rogers told the regents that the university system was dysfunctional and inefficient and that its divisiveness was largely to blame. In addition to telling regents to get their act together, Rogers asked regents to help promote more private fund-raising and to develop better controls over institutional presidents "who do as they please."
Anthony and Derby issued their own memo Thursday afternoon to let other regents know they had met with Rogers that morning to "convey to him our deep regret and disappointment" in what they saw as an overly critical and unnecessary memo.
"His comments (meant constructively he assured us) in our view only further diminished the reputation of the board without contributing positively," Anthony writes in the memo.
But both Anthony and Rogers said they believed their meeting had resolved most of the issues.
"We had a good conversation," Anthony said. "He wants to work with the board and didn't mean anything negative. He was just making observations.
"We're working together and we're communicating."
Anthony declined to specify what had distressed him in the memo.
Rogers agreed, noting that he, Anthony and Derby are "all good friends. We have differences but we are very civil with each other."
The board was almost evenly split on the memo, according to Sun interviews of 11 of the 13 regents. Several regents said they thought Rogers had stepped over the line into advocating policy when that wasn't his job, while others supported the chancellor and said they were glad he had raised what they thought were issues the board needed to address.
Derby, however, echoed the concerns of several regents when she said many of the efficiencies Rogers wants to put in place as a businessman wouldn't work in the messy democracy of higher education.
"Our form of government is not an efficient government," Regent Doug Hill agreed, noting that the only efficient governments he knew were under the dictatorships of Adolf Hitler or Saddam Hussein.
"Efficiency and democracy are not compatible," he said.
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