Dobelle, regents spar over
coming evaluation
University of Hawaii President Evan Dobelle traded verbal jabs yesterday with regents who announced the hiring of a consultant for this year's evaluation of him.
Dobelle told the regents he "wears (last year's critical) evaluation as a badge of honor," adding, "It was not an embarrassment to me."
Regents told Dobelle they resented what they called his mischaracterizations about the board and an Office of Information Practices opinion about how the evaluation was conducted.
Before the exchange over last year's report about Dobelle, regent Kitty Lagareta announced that a board task force had hired Robert Atwell, president emeritus of the American Council on Education, as a consultant to interview people and report on how well Dobelle is performing his duties in his third year as president.
Dobelle is providing a list of names of people he thinks Atwell should interview. The regents are coming up with their own list, Lagareta said.
She said after the meeting that the names on both lists would probably be made public. The people on the regents' list will be made up of many of the same constituent groups interviewed for last year's evaluation, she said.
Atwell will be paid a daily rate, plus travel expenses from his home in Florida, for a total of about $15,000 to $20,000, Lagareta said.
The regents also voted to form a task force to come up with proposals to revise the board's conflict-of-interest and political-activity policies.
The regents on the task forces will work with UH lawyers to research and come up with suggested policies but will not be subject to the state's open-meetings law. The policy recommendation will then be discussed at a public meeting.
During his report to the board following the task force vote and discussion, Dobelle commented that he hoped the regent's task force groups would follow "if not the spirit of the (sunshine) law, then the letter of the law."
Lagareta, Walter Nunokawa, student regent Trent Kakuda and Chairwoman Pat Lee took offense at Dobelle's statement.
Lagareta said the board has had extensive briefings from OIP on the sunshine law and that, except for a mistake based on erroneous advice from the UH general counsel, the board has been one of the most open public boards.
She questioned whether Dobelle understood the "distinction between a secret meeting and a closed meeting."
Meanwhile, interim regent Ted Hong, who has been one of Dobelle's most vocal critics, stayed mostly out of the fray. Yesterday was Hong's last meeting because his term expires May 5.
Hong noted that open meetings and discussions sometimes mean that "we air what sometimes can be characterized as dirty laundry."