Regents should run for election, senator says

HELENA – Montana's system of public education would be more transparent and accountable if the Board of Regents and other appointed officials were elected, a Laurel lawmaker told a Senate committee today.

Sen. Dan McGee, R-Laurel (pictured), is sponsoring Senate Bills 80 and 81, which would ask Montanans to change the state's Constitution to allow for the election of members of the state's Board of Regents and Board of Public Education. Currently, those members are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate.

“Where do they get their power?” McGee asked the Senate Education and Cultural Resources Committee. “It’s not from the people.”

Supporters of SB 80 and SB 81 said elections would give that power back to the people affected by the boards’ decisions.

“It would give parents an opportunity to vote on how the state Board of Education is chosen,” said Elaine Sollie Herman, who ran unsuccessfully for superintendent of public instruction in November.

McGee said the public should have a greater voice in such matters such as the rising cost of college tuition.

“I have been, for one, frustrated by the fact that … tuition is just going to keep going up and we don’t have anything to say,” McGee said.

But opponents argued that elections would expose the governance Montana colleges and public schools to partisan politics, something the constitution's framers had hoped to avoid.

“I don’t think you’ll get more expertise,” said Eric Feaver, president of the 17,000-member Montana Education Association/Montana Federation of Teachers. “I think you’ll get more divisiveness. I think you’ll get culture wars.”

Commissioner of Higher Education Sheila Stearns said regents are accountable to the Legislature because the Legislature alone decides how much funding higher education receives.

“Just because they’re not elected doesn’t mean they don’t take those levels of accountability extremely seriously,” Stearns said.

-by CNS correspondent Molly Priddy