Passing out plums

College appointees should be invested in the school, not just in the governor

July 09, 2010

Here's an assignment for political junkies and ordinary citizens alike.

What follows are two lists of appointments by Virginia governors to the governing bodies of two public universities. Compare and contrast.

Appointments by Gov. Mark Warner:

2004, to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors: Glynn Key, G. S. Fitz-Hugh Jr., Heywood Fralin and Gordon Rainey. Key gave Democrat Warner's campaign $2,480. Fralin and Rainey support mostly Republican candidates and gave nothing to Warner. Fitz-Hugh made no political contributions.

2005, to the College of William and Mary Board of Visitors: Alvin Anderson, James Dillard, Michael Powell, Jeffrey Trammell and Barbara Ukrop. Anderson, Trammell and Ukrop had given in the $1,000 range to Warner or his PAC. He got no money from Dillard, who was then a Republican state delegate, or Powell, also a Republican.

You get points if you observed that every one of McDonnell's appointees was a contributor to his campaign for governor, to his earlier campaign for attorney general or to his PAC. In contrast, the big donors among Warner's picks sent their money Republicans' way; only a few gave money to him, and in relatively small amounts.

McDonnell announced eight appointments to other boards, and six were donors to his campaigns.

Patronage is one of the perks governors inherit at the swearing-in ceremony: the right to dispense plums to reward (and inspire) big donors and supporters. Nothing inherently wrong with that; it's reasonable that the results of elections should filter into policy-making throughout the institutions of the state. But the moment a politician switches from campaigning to governing, a more nuanced motivation than political payback has to kick in.

That is especially important with college boards. They're fairly autonomous, which is a good thing, and the members' policies and preferences shape an institution and its culture. Virginia higher education can be no better than the people who lead it.

Warner devised an excellent solution: a bipartisan panel that worked with colleges to come up with and assess a list of potential appointees. Warner picked from that list — and from both parties.

That advisory panel is now established by state law, and McDonnell is salting his version with Republican players, including former Attorney General Jerry Kilgore. The preponderance of big donors among the resulting choices is worrisome.

That's not to conclude that anything is amiss — yet. For instance, the McDonnell appointments to the boards of W&M and U.Va. are accomplished individuals with meaningful ties to the schools they will now help lead. But appointments should not be limited to people who have significant sums to give or the inclination to give to politicians. Future appointments will reveal McDonnell's priorities.

Allowing the head of state government to appoint every member of their boards is a troublesome anachronism for schools such as U.Va. and W&M, which receive only a small fraction of their budgets from the state. That's all the more reason that any governor's appointees should pass the test of being committed to the success of the institution and its main constituencies — students, parents, donors — not just due to be rewarded for the success of the politician who passes out the plums.