Dann's bill targets changes for trustees

Dann thinks 'everyday people' should serve on trustee boards.
By JEFF ORTEGA
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
COLUMBUS -- State Sen. Marc Dann says trustees at Ohio's public colleges and universities should be more outspoken on topics such as the increasing cost of higher education.
Dann, of Liberty, D-32nd, says he's got a proposal he thinks can bring people to college trustee positions who have a greater sensitivity to such issues.
Dann unveiled a bill this weekWednesday that would alter the criteria for becoming a trustee of state colleges, universities and community colleges.
The bill would require that each public college, university and community college boards of trustees include the parent of a student at the school at the time of the appointment.
Also, the bill would require an equal number of Democrats and Republicans on trustee boards. The proposed measure would require newly appointed trustees to live in the community the institution of higher learning is located in or be graduates or former instructors of the school.
New perspective needed
Dann, who's seeking the Democratic nomination this year for state attorney general, said college trustees many times are drawn from the business community and not from everyday people.
"We need that type of perspective," Dann said.
During debate last year on the state's two-year, $51.2 billion state budget, Dann said he didn't think many university trustees were as vocal as they should have been to increase the state's funding of higher education.
According to legislative researchers, the state's two-year budget allocates $2.39 billion to higher education in all funds in this fiscal year, a 1.3-percent boost from the previous year.
The state spending plan allocates $2.57 billion to higher education in 2007, a 3.2-percent increase from the current fiscal year, legislative researchers say.
Dann's bill also would ban former legislators, executive agency employees or lobbyists from serving as university trustees for a period of three years after they leave government service or stop lobbying.
Gov. Bob Taft, a Republican, appointed Brian K. Hicks, a lobbyist who formerly had been the governor's chief of staff to a nine-year term on the Ohio State University trustee board in May 2004.
Hicks pleaded no contest this past July to a state ethics violation. He was found guilty, but has said he plans to remain on the OSU board.
Unfamiliar with bill
Jim McCollum, executive director of the Inter-University Council of Ohio, an association of the presidents of the state's four-year colleges and universities and free-standing medical schools, was unfamiliar with Dann's proposal.
But McCollum said the council, in the past, has been opposed to having designated slots on college boards for specified categories of trustees.
Dann said he developed his measure after reading accounts in a Toledo newspaper that examined political campaign contributions by college trustees.
College and university trustees appointed by the governor's office have contributed at least $500,000 to Taft, The Blade of Toledo reported last month.