Higher ed change would keep public in the dark

Jeff German and Steve Kanigher

Thursday, Nov. 22, 2007 | 6:54 a.m.

After months of debate about a lax disclosure policy that shielded UNLV faculty members' outside work from the public, the Nevada System of Higher Education has crafted a new policy that shines little additional light on those dealings.

The proposed policy, which the Board of Regents will debate next week, simply would require UNLV and other institutions to file annual reports providing vague information such as how many professors filed outside income disclosure forms.

The names of the professors, along with the names of their employers, would remain confidential and not subject to public scrutiny.

As with the current policy, the public would have no way of knowing which faculty members had outside jobs that posed potential conflicts with their university duties and whether and how those conflicts were resolved.

"I'm very disappointed," said Regent Steve Sisolak, who supports full disclosure of all off-campus income earned by faculty members.

"I would have hoped that after such a lengthy time period, they would have proposed a policy that would have made this stuff open so the public can review and decide for itself whether any conflicts exist."

The debate was sparked by Sun requests for records detailing UNLV faculty members' outside work.

Jane Nichols, the university system's vice chancellor of academic and student affairs, said officials tried to balance the public's right to know in the proposed policy with the faculty's right to engage in outside services.

"We want reasonable oversight and yet we don't want to interfere with the activities of the faculty," she said.

If the names of professors and their outside employers were made public, Nichols said, it would discourage the professors from reporting the additional income to their supervisors.

But Regent James Dean Leavitt, a Las Vegas attorney who sits on a regents committee that will discuss the proposed policy Monday, doesn't buy that argument.

"That's like saying every time somebody pays me in cash, I don't have to report it," Leavitt said. "The law is the law. If it's a board policy, they'd have to follow it."

Leavitt said the vast majority of off-campus work should be made public.

"I recognize that there may be situations where privacy outweighs disclosure," he said. "But unless there's a compelling reason to protect privacy, this type of information absolutely should be disclosed."

Nichols insisted the proposed policy, despite its lack of public disclosure, still would force university officials to get a greater handle on what professors are doing off campus.

Until recently, that wasn't the case at UNLV.

Following the Sun's inquiries in the summer, UNLV officials admitted they had no idea how many faculty members earned outside income last year and had no system in place to monitor potential conflicts.

Last month, after Neal Smatresk, UNLV's executive vice president and provost, instructed all college deans to require faculty members to submit disclosure forms, the university learned that roughly 25 percent of 1,350 faculty members performed outside work.

University officials resolved potential conflicts of interest of 110 professors doing work off campus, Smatresk said.

But UNLV officials, citing the university system's confidentiality rules, have refused to give the Sun copies of the disclosure forms. They also have refused to provide the names of those earning outside income and their employers, as well as which professors did work that conflicted with their UNLV duties and how those conflicts were resolved.

The majority of the 13-member Board of Regents polled by the Sun in August said they favored public disclosure, yet the policy drafted by university system officials appears to take a step back from that position.

The proposed policy includes a clause that specifically states such records are to remain "confidential personnel documents."

The Board of Regents, however, has the final say on the subject next week.

The board's four-member Research and Economic Development Committee will take up the policy Monday and make a recommendation for the full board to discuss later in the week.

Regent Jason Geddes, chairman of the research committee, said he favors keeping secret the names of professors and their employers, but he wants to make sure the annual reports contain enough information to show that the institutions are properly monitoring their professors' outside work.

Regent Ron Knecht, another member of the committee, said it is necessary to protect the confidentiality of outside faculty relationships that serve the public interest.

But he added that he wants enough information disclosed in the annual reports to satisfy skeptics.

"At the end of the day, we're trying to assure the public that they're getting their money's worth," he said.