UH autonomy, yes -- Amendment No. 1, no!

ON NOV. 7, voters not only will choose our governor and many other elected officials, they also will vote on several proposed amendments to the state Constitution. The first of these is about the way the University of Hawaii Board of Regents is appointed. This proposal is "a wolf in sheep's clothing" -- it looks innocent, but would do great harm. It should be defeated.

Amendment No. 1 purports to take politics out of UH by putting in place "a more open, fair and bipartisan process" for picking regents. Actually, it would do just the opposite. It would reintroduce politics with a vengeance and greatly erode the university's hard-won autonomy.

If passed, the amendment would invite micromanagement by legislators and inject special interests into the governance of the 10-campus university system. This is why the university's accrediting organizations -- the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (responsible for our community colleges) and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (which accredits the four-year campuses) -- have expressed grave concerns about the proposal.

For years, the governor has nominated regents, with nominees going before the state Senate for review and confirmation. If passed, Amendment No. 1 would make the governor a virtual bystander and put the Legislature, with all its politics and horse trading, at the center of the process.

Under the amendment, the Legislature would first establish criteria for regents. It would then select the members of an "advisory council" responsible for picking nominees. Regent nominees would be picked to represent a series of special interests -- a guarantee that the university would be overseen not by people concerned with its overall well-being, but rather by individuals whose constituencies have nominated them to represent one primary perspective on the Board of Regents.

The governor would be obliged to pick nominees only from this pre-selected pool, shaped by the Legislature. The person finally "nominated by the governor" would then be subject to Senate confirmation. Moreover, the amendment would take the possibility of a second term entirely out of the governor's hands and give it to the Senate alone.

Do we want the university to be governed by independent thinkers who can make tough, politically unpopular choices? That is what we have now. Or would we prefer governance by a Board of Regents that resembles a mini-legislature, with each member pressured to vote according to the selected special interests he or she was hand-picked to represent -- and all of them looking over their shoulders at their sponsors in the House and Senate?

Where did this crazy proposal come from? It has two major backers. One, retired lawyer Frank Boas, was a great admirer of Evan Dobelle, the former UH president, and still nurses a grudge against the regents who ousted him. The other backer is Clayton Hee, chairman of the Senate Committee on Higher Education, who has made plain his doubts about UH autonomy and has openly interfered in university business, for example by instructing President David McClain to hire a specific person for a specific job. As his record at Bishop Estate and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs clearly demonstrates, Hee has made a career of micromanagement and power games.

These are the reasons why the university's accreditors, ACCJC and WASC, have independently expressed their concern about Amendment No. 1. This is why the Association of Governing Boards for Colleges and Universities views as the "best practice" the selection of regents by governors, with confirmation by state senators -- the way we're already doing it in Hawaii.

If you care about the future of the University of Hawaii, support its autonomy and think legislative micromanagement is a step backwards, please vote "No" on Constitutional Amendment No. 1.

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