In ethics course, regents encouraged to play nicely

Friday, March 11, 2005 | 11:05 a.m.

The much-maligned university Board of Regents reviewed state ethics regulations and received lessons on civility Thursday during a special workshop meeting at the system's Las Vegas office.

During the three-hour workshop, Nevada Ethics Commission Executive Director Stacy Jennings reviewed the state's laws on public officers, and UNLV Boyd School of Law Dean Richard Morgan encouraged the regents to follow the "Golden Rule" in their debates.

The civility lesson was especially important for regents, Morgan said, because as a collegial board they serve as the role models for the state's youth and because their past controversies have brought discredit to them, the system and the state.

Any controversy, Morgan said, also leads state lawmakers to enact new rules or laws to make sure "bad stuff" doesn't happen again. There's currently a handful of laws before the Legislature this session in direct response to past actions of the Board of Regents, including a constitutional amendment to change the board's structure and several addressing open-meeting-law issues.

Morgan, who presented alongside Boyd law Professor Jeffrey Stempel, said the "Polly Anna-ish" side of him hoped the board could put away any political differences and work together toward the good of the system.

"You're the public whipping board of the state and you are in the foxhole together," Morgan said.

The workshop came after about four months of relative quiet in an otherwise turbulent year-and-a-half for the Board of Regents, which oversees the entire University and Community College System of Nevada.

Dust-ups, name-calling and shouting matches that were already common occurrences for the board flared following a split vote to demote two community college administrators in November 2003. Regents accused each other of soliciting votes in private and of purposefully violating the open-meeting law, and the board continually split along the same lines on even unrelated issues.

The infighting led Interim Chancellor Jim Rogers to send a scathing memo to regents in September, blaming board divisiveness for most of the inefficiencies and problems in the system.

Several regents credit Rogers for bringing the board back together and also for putting a stop to the competitiveness among the state's two universities. They said Thursday's workshop was another "step in the right direction" toward restoring the board's credibility with the public.

"I think the public needs to know that we care about the issue (of ethics and civility)," said Regent James Dean Leavitt, who was elected for the first time in November and who wants to see performance standards for regents.

The need to be civil is as basic as "mom, home and apple pie," Morgan said, but its often harder to implement. There needs to be a balance between airing all views and maintaining efficiency in a meeting.

And civility is more than just courtesy or politeness, which can be fake, Stempel said. It involves giving equal consideration to all sides and genuinely treating people the way you would want to be treated.

True civility is "deliberative democracy" where even the most passionate subjects can be discussed rationally -- "even if it's Red Sox versus Yankees," Stempel said.

Regents -- or at least the 10 out of 13 that attended the workshop -- took the message quite civilly, and all agreed it was what they needed to hear.

"He said what needed to be said," Regent Howard Rosenberg said of Morgan's lecture, noting that he is usually guilty of incivility when he feels that he is not being heard. "He told us flat-assed why civility is so important."

Both Rosenberg and Regent Mark Alden called on the need for an independent system ombudsman, someone who could receive and act on confidential complaints from the public or from system employees to ensure accountability.

Alden, one of the board's chief critics last year, also said he would be working with Leavitt on a code of ethics for the regents to consider adopting.