May 14, 2009 08:31 PM UTC

Questions about CSU chancellor selection

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• by: BobMoore

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

Trevor Hughes at the Coloradoan has an interesting story today that looks at the process that led to the selection of Joe Blake as the sole finalist for CSU’s new chancellor position.

The questions surrounding the process haven’t gotten the broader media attention I think they deserve. The Colorado Independent and the Coloradoan have covered the issues in some depth, but it hasn’t gone much past that.

You can see Trevor’s story here:

http://www.coloradoan.com/arti…

A quick summary of Trevor’s story, as well as some background:

Blake, the president and CEO of the Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce, was named the sole finalist last Tuesday, with one dissenting vote. During the public part of the meeting, not a single Board of Governors member offered a comment for or against Blake. All that discussion took place behind closed doors, despite the Colorado Open Meetings Law provision that prohibits a governing board from discussing one of its own members in executive session. That law also says the actual decision on a selection should take place in public, but it was clear by the lack of discussion that the decision was made in executive session.

The search process began earlier this year, but Blake formally applied on April 29, the same day he and board chairman Doug Jones met in another closed-door session. The agenda for the meeting included only a nebulous description of discussing unspecified legal issues with counsel. But the timing raises questions. Again, state law says it’s illegal for a governing board to meet behind closed doors to discuss its own members.

Blake was nominated for the chancellor job on April 7 by Patrick Grant, a fellow member of the CSU Board of Governors as well as a member of the chancellor search committee. That 15-member search committee began meeting the next day to review applications and nominations.

However, members of the Legislature say they began hearing in late March that Blake would be named the sole finalist. That’s why Weissman and Shaffer introduced their legislation, which ultimately failed, to make the selection process for university CEOs more transparent and to require more than one finalist.

The search committee on May 4 interviewed “several” candidates and unanimously recommended Blake and one other candidate for consideration by the Board of Governors. None of the other candidates were identified. It’s worth noting that Grant and four other members of the search committee were past or current board members of the Metro Denver Chamber. So is Jones, the current chairman of the Board of Governors.

The Board of Governors met in executive session the following day to interview Blake and the unidentified second candidate. That afternoon, they voted without discussion to select Blake as the sole finalist for the position.

The day after the selection, on May 6, the Coloradoan, Pueblo Chieftain and Colorado Independent sued the Board of Governors, alleging the May 5 and April 29 executive sessions by BOG members violated the Colorado Open Meetings Law. The BOG, through its spokeswoman, said the attorney general’s office has assured them that the meetings were properly conducted. As of this morning, CSU has not filed a formal response to the lawsuit. No hearing has yet been scheduled.

The lawsuit will not impact the selection of Blake. By law, the BOG must wait 14 days after naming finalists to make a selection. That period expires next Tuesday.

If the plaintiffs prevail in the lawsuit, the BOG would be required to make public tape recordings of any executive session that a court rules was conducted illegally. That would bring some retrospective transparency to the process.

I’ll try to keep everyone posted on the process.