Iowa Board of Regents Archives

02Oct 2017 by Lynda Waddington

Transparency’s best hope: Regents lawsuit

Gazette Column

Iowans are one step closer to learning how far former Board of Regent President Bruce Rastetter diverged from the University of Iowa president search process he put in place, and whether he and complicit regents will face consequences for mocking open meeting laws. The members, who constitute a majority of the board tasked with overseeing Iowa’s public universities, had to describe under oath their role in the covert recruitment in 2015 of UI President Bruce Harreld. Secret meetings — which then-Regent Katie Mulholland described as “coordinated in such a way as to avoid the requirement that they be public” — took place weeks after the regents announced a transparent search process, but only hours before Harreld made official application for the job. In addition to Mulholland, Harreld met in private with former…

27Dec 2015 by Lynda Waddington

2015 ‘gifts’ that should be returned

Gazette Column

If someone will please direct me to the back of the line, I have a few “gifts” from 2015 I’d like to return. 1. The dress. We’ll never get back all the time we spent trying to figure out how to accessorize an outfit that some saw as white and gold and others saw as blue and black. 2. Bird flu. The epidemic cost the state more than $1 billion and the nation more than $3 billion. Keep your fingers crossed that it doesn’t get re-gifted in 2016. 3. DVD set of “The Apprentice.” It looked good from a distance; the GOP primary offered a different perspective. 4. Hasty closure of two state-run mental health institutes. We shouldn’t forget that there was a bipartisan compromise rejected by Gov. Terry Branstad…

13Dec 2015 by Lynda Waddington

More GOP cronyism staining UI

Gazette Column

Some of us have friends. Some of us have friends who use their professional positions to funnel us money. Guess which kind former Republican Party of Iowa chairman Matt Strawn has. A records request to the University of Iowa by the Associated Press found $321,900 in no-bid contracts awarded to Strawn’s consulting company. Strawn, in turn, subcontracted firms led by others with GOP ties to perform at least part of the work. The contracts were managed by UI Vice President for External Relations Peter Matthes, a former Iowa Senate Republican Caucus staff director who served alongside Strawn. Strawn’s company was, for instance, hired in the spring of 2013 to conduct online and grass roots advocacy. That contract totaled $24,900 — just a hundred dollars below a threshold triggering quotes from…

08Nov 2015 by Lynda Waddington

An opening, but not yet a mandate

Gazette Column

Progressives in Iowa City are excited, and rightfully so, but shouldn’t be lulled into believing that electing a city council majority is the end game. Tuesday was historic for Iowa City municipal politics. In its most boiled down sense, the contest before voters was progressives vs. corporate interests — and, for the first time in long time in city races, the progressives overwhelmingly won. A slate, known as the “core four,” displaced two incumbents to claim a strong majority on the city council. The group has promised to reshape city policies, especially in terms of development and investment priorities. Think of it this way, if the new council had been making the decision on the Chauncey project, it wouldn’t have been approved. No doubt the dust-up surrounding three worker cottages…

25Oct 2015 by Lynda Waddington

Regent ‘anger’ raises more questions

Gazette Column

While standing by the selection of a new University of Iowa president, one member of the Board of Regents has expressed his concern that the process was flawed. Speaking Thursday at the second of a two-day meeting on the University of Iowa campus, and less than 24 hours after demonstrators publicly asked regents to resign their posts, Subhash Sahai admitted he was “pissed” when he learned about previously-undisclosed meetings between a single candidate and five other regents and search committee members. “I want the people at the university to know that we had impassioned, intentioned and rigorous debate,” Sahai said of regent deliberations. But he also admitted that at the time the selection was being debated he was unaware that some members had met privately with only one of the…

13Oct 2015 by Lynda Waddington

Branstad’s political cronyism experiment failed

Gazette Column

Let’s be very clear: This isn’t about J. Bruce Harreld. It also isn’t about the University of Iowa. Once, while describing a public relations transgression by UI officials, I wrote, “What a slice of rancid baloney.” How could I have known that one day Gov. Terry Branstad would serve an entire loaf? Branstad, who continues to keep the Iowa Judicial Branch busy sorting out the legalities of his administration’s unilateral decisions to close state-run facilities, has suddenly decided he does, in fact, have limits. I know. Coulda knocked me over with a feather. And, as much as I’d like to view the admission as the start of some sparkly new bipartisan magical mystery tour, Branstad’s proclaimed limits don’t exist. At the end of September, UI faculty members called for the…

19Jan 2015 by Lynda Waddington

Let Mason departure herald new age of messy

Gazette Column

The People’s Republic of Johnson County is a messy place, often overrun with public meetings and task force investigations. Everyone, it seems, wants a voice. Because of this, Johnson County and many of its subdivisions — the Iowa City Community School District, city governments and subcommittees — receive a lot of public and media attention, not all of it positive. There is no shortage of people, including me, who are willing to dig through the messy remnants and eek out an opinion on what should have been — the vast majority of such wisdom resting on the perch of hindsight. And while there is and should be a place for those who look behind, hopefully wrapping and presenting past experiences for the benefit of others, we should always be grateful…