Two former members of the UW System Board of Regents requested an investigation into board meeting procedures with state Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager's office Thursday claiming regents may be contributing to the \shrinking of our democracy.""
The board, which sets tuition, faculty and staff salaries as well as admissions criteria, has held numerous closed teleconference meetings since 2001, eight of which former regents Ody Fish and Bert Grover are calling into question.
According to the Open Meetings Law, such calls are illegal if at least half of the regents, a quorum, take part in the call without notifying the press. Fish and Grover said they want to know if calls that have had a quorum of members of a specific committee within the executive committee violate the law.
""Beyond that ... is the concern in general about the conference calls and [how] they happen much more frequently than they used to and the possible means of abuse by not inviting the public in to even hear the conferences,"" said Jay Heck, spokesperson for the Common Cause in Wisconsin, which supports the investigation.
However, regent President Toby Marcovich said such conference calls are common. He said the regents do not use the system to persuade other board members before meetings, but to clarify information.
""If I called [regents] and said ... 'I don't think I'm going to like what you're going to say and I want to change it,' that would be pretty bad. And of course, that wouldn't happen,"" Marcovich said.
Yet Grover claimed regents use teleconferences to establish consensus before scheduled meetings where public voice is welcomed.
""It comes out of a corporate CEO board mentality. You know, line up the boats. No conflict. No debate. Consensus management. Bring forward the agenda pre-agreed upon,"" Grover said. ""That's how you do it in private sectors but this is a public university ... and they violate the open meeting law when they crawl around and gather up consensus.""
However, Marcovich said recent regents meetings have gone with relatively little debate because regents have not had many controversial issues to decide upon. Additionally, he cited the UW System's new transfer credit system as a topic of an hour's debate at last Friday's scheduled meeting. This shows regents dispute certain topics at open meetings, Marcovich said.
Still, Grover said other, major topics garnered minimal discussions at meetings.
""You want to slip pay raises through for top execs and raise student tuition 18 percent? That needs to be debated,"" he said.
