Methods discussed to regulate regents who receive favors

Monday, Sept. 26, 2005 | 10:05 a.m.

Chancellor Jim Rogers and some regents are looking into whether there needs to be a codified way for college presidents to tattle on regents who try to unduly influence them.

Regent Doug Hill of Sparks on Friday successfully called for postponement of action on a proposal to prohibit regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education from seeking jobs in the system until one year after leaving office.

Hill complained that the ban didn't begin to address the larger problem of regents using their positions to receive favors from the institutions. Hill requested that system lawyers draft a more detailed policy to be voted on at the December meeting.

"We're the elephants and everybody else is a mouse," Hill said. "We have all seen undue influence on this floor by the elephants."

Hill said the policy also "ignored the elephant in the room," referring to Regent Howard Rosenberg, who is an art professor at UNR.

Prior to Rosenberg running for office, the state Ethics Commission had ruled that he could serve on the board.

Hill said university regents in the past have used their influence to obtain tickets to the NCAA basketball tournament's Final Four from athletic directors, to get all-access passes to be on the field during football games, to intervene in personnel matters to help their friends, and have even threatened administrators to change the order of capital improvement priorities.

The favors usually are requested indirectly, making them difficult to regulate, Hill said. He and Rogers also said the problem is restricted to only two to three regents on the 13-member board.

Rogers and Hill suggested that school presidents be required to immediately report to the chancellor and the regent chairman incidents of any inappropriate requests.

"Presidents are reluctant to take on a regent," Rogers said.

Rogers said regents often don't realize the power they wield or the pressure even innocent requests can put on presidents. Presidents also take suggestions from regents or even himself as orders when they are truly meant as suggestions, Rogers said.

There are already policies in place to prevent regents from asking for favors, but they're not really enforceable, Rogers said.

Regent James Dean Leavitt, chairman of the board's development committee, said that was the main problem with the board's ethics rules.

"A rule without a remedy isn't a rule," Leavitt said.

The proposed cooling-off period would have restricted regents from seeking a job at the system office or at any of the eight institutions within one year after leaving office. Regents drafted the policy after former Regent Doug Seastrand resigned from office in May to take a job in homeland security work at UNLV's private Research Foundation.

Regents said they weren't questioning Seastrand's integrity, but they said the incident led to the public perception that regents could use their influence to gain employment.

Regent Steve Sisolak argued that the policy was essential to closing that perception, and that a one-year period wasn't unreasonable.

Sisolak also was the first person to suggest requiring the school presidents to report regents' inappropriate requests.

"For these individuals to say that they don't have influence over presidents is naive," Sisolak said.

Other regents, meanwhile, questioned the language of the proposed cooling-off policy, whether it was even needed, and whether it would be more suitable simply to ban regents from applying for positions while they are still regents. The majority of regents indicated they could support that policy over an actual cooling-off period. At least two regents, Stavros Anthony and Linda Howard, said they would like to be able to retain the option to go back to work for one of the institutions after leaving office. Both have worked for the Community College of Southern Nevada and UNLV.

Sisolak said he feared that by not acting on the cooling-off period, regents were adding to a negative public perception of the board.

"If we don't approve this item, it will appear to me and an awful lot of other people that we are shuffling this back under the rug," Sisolak said prior to Hill's move to table.

Regents asked system lawyers to bring back a revamped version of the policy at the December meeting.

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