NASHVILLE - Gov. Bill Haslam's proposal to reduce the size and reshape the University of Tennessee system's board of trustees came in rough going in a Senate panel today after past UT national alumni association presidents and others criticized the legislation.
In the end, Government Operations Committee members let the bill move forward but only with a "neutral" recommendation instead of a positive recommendation. At least one senator wanted to slap it with a "negative" recommendation.
While praising Haslam and the General Assembly for their financial support of the UT, Bo Roberts, a one-time UT vice president and a former top aide to former Gov. Buford Ellington, told senators that "I have no problem with tweaking a system to make it better, but I have problems changing something if it ain't broke."
Haslam's plan calls for cutting the 26-member board down to 11, eliminating four of the five ex officio members including the governor, and kicking off the voting student and faculty trustee.
Other provisions include establishing "advisory boards" at each of the system's four campuses, including the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
That's a "step too far," Roberts said of the advisory boards. "My fear would be that this would be the first step in the breakup of the UT system."
But Government Operations Chairman Mike Bell, R-Riceville, said he has spoken with two current trustees who tell him the size of the current board "makes it to where they feel like they don't have enough buy in."
Bell said that changing the board is "not something we take lightly," but added, "I tell you, speaking for myself, I'm looking for a change."
He said he wants a board more attentive to the General Assembly's desires.
"I'm tired of hearing of Sex Week, I'm tired of hearing of the latest gender-neutral pronoun. . I'm tired of the coaching debacle we just witnessed. I want to see a board that's more active."
Sex Week, an annual UT-Knoxville campus program aimed at promoting safe sex practices, has drawn the ire of conservative critics over events like a "golden condom scavenger hunt" that have been featured on Fox News.
Lawmakers also erupted over a faculty member's suggestion that professors and students use gender-neutral pronouns.
The "coaching debacle" was an apparent reference to the uproar generated late last year when UT athletic officials sought to hire Ohio State assistant Greg Schiano as the new football coach which led to the abrupt departure of Athletic Director John Currie.
Bill Nolan, UT's first voting trustee in the early 1970s who later became a state legislator and now lobbies for business interests at the Capitol, urged lawmakers to keep a student and faculty member as voting trustees.
Nolan recalled how a state landlord-tenant law came into being when he urged fellow UT Trustee Clyde York, head of the powerful Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation, to help after two UT-Knoxville students living in substandard housing died in a fire.
York, according to Nolan, called the the House and Senate majority leaders and told them to come to a meeting where, at York's insistence, they eventually hammered out legislation and passed it.
That wouldn't have happened without a voting student trustee able to forge relationships with other trustees, Nolan said.
Bell added to the governor's proposal an amendment that tweaks some aspects of the legislation.
While retaining a provision that still leaves the governor in charge of making trustee appointments which would then come before the House and Senate, it adds a requirement that the appointments be affirmatively approved by lawmakers.
Another provision would allow lawmakers to recall trustees for "neglect of duty."
During the hearing, Sen. Janice Bowling, R-Tullahoma, said she wouldn't mind slapping the governor's bill with a "negative" recommendation while a fellow Republican said he thought the bill should be delayed.
Bell urged they let the bill move out today, minus a "positive" recommendation and with just the "neutral" recommendation.
