Beshear meets with CPE chair on search

By RONNIE ELLIS
CNHI News Service

FRANKFORT April 30, 2008 12:23 pm

— The Council on Postsecondary Education will meet in special session Wednesday morning to discuss a “personnel matter,” but CPE chairman John Turner wouldn’t specifically say after a 40-minute meeting with Gov. Steve Beshear Tuesday what it is.
When asked if the agenda item referred to CPE interim president Brad Cowgill, whose permanent appointment Beshear opposes, Turner said, “It’s very possible.” But he wouldn’t elaborate.
The council is the coordinating body for the state’s nine public universities and system of community and technical colleges. It has been without a permanent president for over a year, since the retirement of Dr. Thomas Layzell. Cowgill was appointed interim president last year after the council suspended a national search for Layzell’s successor. Earlier this month the council voted to employ Cowgill in the post but has not executed a contract with him.
Beshear contends the CPE didn’t follow the law which requires a national search and sought an opinion from Attorney General Jack Conway who concurred with Beshear’s position. Subsequently, Turner sought Wednesday’s meeting with Beshear to discuss where the council goes now.
He and CPE member John Hall met with Beshear in the governor’s office for about 40 minutes Tuesday. When they left, Turner said very little.
“It was to just make sure we understood exactly and clearly, person to person, (to) get it out of the press (and) talk between us and understand what is going on,” Turner said. He called the meeting “very instructive.”
Beshear said it was a good meeting at which he again told Turner he thinks the law requires a national search and that Cowgill shouldn’t be considered for the job by that search.
“Because after everything that’s happened,” Beshear explained, “should (Cowgill) be a candidate, I don’ think you’d have a search with really any integrity to it, because no other candidates would want to apply because they would think the fix is in – whether it is or not.”
Beshear wouldn’t say if he’s considering disbanding the council or asking for its members’ resignations.
“We’re taking this one step at a time,” Beshear said when asked what options he might pursue should the council not follow his wishes.
“They’re going to have a meeting tomorrow and discuss where they are and where they want to go,” the governor said. “We’ll see after that.”
The council was created in 1997 during the administration of Gov. Paul Patton to replace the old Council on Higher Education. The law requires the use of a search firm and conducting a national search for a candidate with a national reputation in higher education. Cowgill, an attorney, served as a member of the advisory board for the Bluegrass Community and Technical College but has no higher education administrative experience. He is a former law partner of Beshear’s and was budget director under Gov. Ernie Fletcher.
The governor said he expects a number of highly qualified candidates to be interested in the position – if they know Cowgill isn’t in the running.
He also said he favors keeping the current role of the council as a coordinating body for Kentucky’s higher education system.
He said the council is “neither fish nor fowl,” comparing its role to one somewhere between the extremes of a state-wide “super board” governing all the public universities and community colleges and no board at all. He said the first alternative is “just not going to happen in Kentucky from a political standpoint whether it’s a good idea or not.”
But it’s no good either, Beshear said, for the universities to operate independently, “going to the legislature and fighting for whatever they can get and fighting each other in the process.”
Beshear said the CPE does have a role as a coordinating body to supervise tuition rates, restrict overlapping and duplicative degree programs which the state can’t afford, and to advocate with lawmakers and the public for higher education’s importance to Kentucky.
Wednesday’s special CPE meeting will be at 11:30 a.m. at its offices on Capital Center Drive in Frankfort. The only item on the agenda is the Personnel Matter.
Ronnie Ellis writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. Reach him at rellis@cnhi.com.