Cooper panel: NC politicians should share power to appoint UNC campus leaders

After years of perceived political influences on public higher education in North Carolina, a bipartisan commission formed by Gov. Roy Cooper on Monday recommended possible remedies, including increased power sharing.

Among other changes, the Governance of Public Universities in North Carolina commission recommends increasing the size of leadership boards of the UNC System and individual campuses allowing the the General Assembly’s minority political party and the governor to appoint members.

Other recommendations relate to enhancing transparency, consistency and accountability among the system’s board of governors and individual campus board trustees.

The group’s recommendations come a little more than seven months after Cooper established the commission by executive order in November. The group has met a handful of times since then, and has also hosted forums around the state to collect views from members of the public.gather public input for the recommendations from the public.

At a press conference Monday afternoon following the commission’s morning meeting, Cooper said the recommendations would allow the UNC System “continue to be the priceless gem and economic recruitment tool that it is,” while curbing political influences on the boards that govern the system’s universities.

“Although there are good people who care deeply about our universities now serving, it’s clear that university leaders should reflect more of who we are as North Carolinians,” Cooper said.

Margaret Spellings, the former UNC System president and U.S. Secretary of Education under Republican President George W. Bush, co-chaired the commission. She called the recommendations “common-sense, interlocking reforms” that could “stand the test of time, however the political winds blow.”

Many of the recommendations would require action and approval by either the Board of Governors or the Republican-controlled General Assembly, where they would likely face an uphill battle to even be considered.

House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger were critical of the commission when Cooper announced its formation in November. The News & Observer contacted communications staff for each for comment Monday.

A focus on board appointments

Under current governance, the state General Assembly appoints all voting members of the system-wide Board of Governors. Boards of trustees at member universities of the system are elected in part by the Board of Governors and in part by the General Assembly.

Since Republicans gained control of both the state House and Senate more than a decade ago, leaders at the system and campus levels have generally become more partisan and conservative-leaning, according to a 2022 report by the American Association of University Professors, a national faculty group. The UNC System operates under a “backdrop of pervasive and overtly partisan political control,” the report alleged.

While the commission recommends changes to appointment powers, it does not propose reducing how many appointments that leaders of the General Assembly could make.

Instead, the commission recommended increasing the size of the boards, with the Board of Governors increasing to between 32 to 37 members, and campus board of trustees growing to 18 members.

Under the commission’s recommendations, additional members of the Board of Governors would include four appointed by the minority party in each chamber of the General Assembly, for a total of eight, and a handful of non-voting members, including the State Superintendent of Public Instruction and the president of the state community college system.

State legislators are currently considering Senate Bill 512, the latest version of which proposes increasing the Board of Governors to 28 members, but would keep all appointments to the board under the recommendation of the Speaker of the House and Senate leader, who are in the majority party.

Allowing the minority party to make appointments would “ensure a more bipartisan BOG with greater diversity of political thought and reduce the perception of political influence in university governance,” the commission’s draft report reads.

The commission also recommends that 16 members of the system board be equally appointed according to the state’s eight “prosperity zones,” or administrative regions — two members selected from each zone — as defined by the Department of Commerce, “to ensure geographical diversity.”

Commission member and Board of Governors member John Fraley noted at Monday’s commission meeting that the current board includes members from six of the eight prosperity zones, and that there is at least one UNC System institution in each zone.

Aside from the recommendations on geographic representation, the recommendations do not include quotas or prescriptions for the genders, races or political affiliations of board members. State law requires Board of Governors members be selected with consideration of “their economic, geographic, political, racial, gender, and ethnic diversity,” but the board has fallen short in recent years of mirroring the diversity of the UNC System and its students, particularly when it comes to gender.

Recalling her experience as UNC System president from 2016 to 2019, Spellings said there was “really a lack of diversity at that time,” and the disproportionately low representation of women on the system board and on some campus boards “kind of makes you scratch your head and ask questions.”

When new members of the Board of Governors assume office in July, women will account for roughly 21% of the board’s voting members. According to enrollment data posted online by the UNC System, 59% of students enrolled across the system this spring were female.

At the campus level, the commission recommends the governor regain the authority to appoint some members to trustee boards — a power stripped away in 2016 after Cooper, a Democrat, defeated former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory. The commission recommended that power not take effect until January 2025, after Cooper leaves office.

At both levels of governance, the commission recommended board members be restricted to serving a single eight-year term. Currently, members serve four-year terms and can be reappointed.

Changing the term length and limits would allow “members more time to lend their experience and expertise to the governing structure, but opens opportunities for more individuals to serve,” said Tom Ross, the other former UNC system president who co-chaired Cooper’s commission.

“We also feel that a single term will reduce the perception of political influence on board members,” Ross said Monday.

Ross was pushed out as UNC System president in 2015 by the Board of Governors, which gave little explanation except that it was time for a “leadership transition,” The N&O reported. Some people, including political consultants and Democrats, at the time charged that the move was purely political.

In addition to Ross, who is also a former state Superior Court judge and president of Davidson College president, members of the 15-member commission included state legislators, previous and current members of university governing boards in the state and more. Cooper said Monday the group included eight Democrats, six Republicans and one unaffiliated voter.

The commission also recommended a one-year “cooling-off period” before registered lobbyists or state legislators could serve on university governing boards, a requirement also intended to curb the perception and reality of conflicts of interest or political influence.

Increasing transparency

Saying it would increase consistency in training and orientation programs for members of the governing boards, as well as to improve recruitment efforts for board members, commission members also recommended the Board of Governors create a “Center of Higher Education Governance” that would be hosted at the UNC System office or on a university campus.

Among other possible responsibilities delegated to the proposed center, it would maintain a database of potential board members “that are representative of the diversity of the state” who are interested in serving on the boards, as well as provide training for prospective members.

The center would also provide an annual report on demographics of board members and publish a regular newsletter on activity of the governing boards.

Other transparency-linked recommendations include livestreaming and recording all university governing board meetings and requiring board members to use public university email accounts for all business and correspondence related to their work as board members.

Ross and Spellings both noted Monday that although the draft recommendations will undergo some changes based on the input and recommendations of commission members before they are finalized, the core elements of the recommendations will remain.

The group’s final report is due to Cooper by June 30, per the governor’s November executive order.