HEALTH REFORM TERROR: The risky scary healthcare reform experiment Pres Obama would subject the nation to will end in themurder of old people. Or it will formalize steps already being taken by smart and lucky Americans unafraid to make their last hour golden.

IT HURTS: Young men across the state are signing up for medical marijuana treatments. “This dramatic increase in an age group that is not expected to suffer from a chronic debilitating condition is concerning,” Colorado’s Chief Medical officer Dr. Ned Calonge said in a news release yesterday.

SUPERBAD: Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank caused a Colorado Politics kerfuffle last week by basically slandering U.S. Sens Udall and Bennet with imaginary observations of the two of them dealmaking in favor of gun rights on the Senate floor. Today Milbank took a sophomoric woman-hater swipe at Hillary Clinton in a video segment of his terribly unfunny “Mouthpiece Theater” satirical video blog-thing. The Washington Post quickly took the video offline. In this economy, how does this man still have work?

REALLY? Either Gov. Ritter stood up and told medical industry people that healthcare reform presented a “tremendous challenge” or the Denver Post just made that up so it could report it because it’s the kind of story the editors there just love. Look, they worked the master-of-the-obvious bit into the headline and into the first paragraph!

NEW DIRECTION CSU: Because, you know, maybe that billboard in Times Square probably wasn’t the best way to go.

Written and compiled by John Tomasic and David O Williams.

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter. And we’re hiring.

Senior executives, including Benson, are taking a salary cut of 5 percent. The position of vice president for academic affairs and research will be eliminated altogether.

Hit with the same major budget shortfalls this year, CSU plowed forward with its controversial chancellor search and speedily hired its own board of governors vice chairmen Joe Blake to fill the position. Analysts estimate that fully funding the position and new chancellor support staff will run to hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars.

Revelations last fall of controversial ballooning administrative costs at the expense of faculty and student funding at CSU forced the resignation of President and chancellor Larry Penley.

Benson addressed any similar concerns regarding administrative costs at CU in a statement released last week to accompany news of the drastic cuts.

The reorganization of system administration will improve our operations while also allowing us to address significant budget challenges. Our primary focus is ensuring that we support our academic and research functions while keeping administrative overhead low.

Later that week, CSU interim president Tony Frank proposed raising tuition by 9 percent for in-state students and cutting 40 jobs to make up for a roughly $33 million budget shortfall.

A day after Frank announced the proposed tuition hikes and job cuts, the CSU board rushed to nominate Blake chancellor. The board will vote on Frank’s budget plan in June.

“For Colorado to pick the right leaders for our colleges, we need the right process. We need a process that is open, transparent, accountable and inclusive,” Sen. Shaffer said in a press release announcing introduction of the bill, HB 1369.

Under the proposed law, public universities would be required to assemble search committees that reflect the full range of the university community. Search committees would openly agree on the job qualifications they are seeking, publicly advertise positions and take at least six months to thoroughly vet the candidates. The names of a search committee’s top choices would be made public and the candidates would be required to make public presentations.

In stories posted last week, The Colorado Independent reported that the CSU chancellor search committee refuses to release applicant names and is likely to present just one, its top choice, for public review.

The speed and secrecy of the search and the restricted membership of the search committee — made up mostly of CSU current or former board members and corporate CEOs — has irked observers and CSU students.

The CSU search began in December in the wake of the resignation of CSU Fort Collins president and university chancellor Larry Penley, who was under fire for mismanagement and corruption. CSU spokesperson Michele McKinney said the CSU board plans to wrap the search and make a hire by July 1st.

Referring directly to the CSU search in the release, Rep. Weissmann said he wanted “to make sure the [CSU chancellor selection] is made in the light of day, not behind closed doors. It should be made with the input of students, alumni, faculty, and other stakeholders. The era of closed-door governing is over. ”

Excerpts from the bill:

The selection process for leaders of the state institutions of higher education must be consistent among the state institutions, incorporating the best search practices… the selection process must be thorough, inclusive and as transparent as possible, while still preserving to the extent necessary candidates’ privacy and confidentiality.

[...]

Search committees shall be broadly representative of the governing board and the system or instituional faculty and administration. The search committee may also include alumni… members of the local or state community… members of the student body… and the system or institutional staff.

Ironically, ex-CSU president Larry Penley figures prominently in both stories.

Penley abruptly resigned from the university in Nov. following revelations, first reported by The Colorado Independent, that he was redirecting massive amounts in revenues to his own office and staff and away from the faculty and students, bloating top executive and other salaries and compensation at the public institution in a manner reminiscent of recently disgraced Wall Street firms.

Shortly after leaving CSU, Penley surfaced as a leading candidate to become president of Idaho’s Moscow campus.

Penley’s hotfoot out of town set the CSU Board of Governors to push through a controversial decision to split the traditionally dual role of president and chancellor at the Fort Collins campus. But the whole process has been fairly shrouded in secrecy with CSU spokeswoman Michelle McKinney telling the Colorado Independent:

“…high-caliber applicants would be reluctant to apply for the position if it was policy to reveal their names. The concern is that news of a failed application would land as a stain on their resumes.”

I wonder if Penley wishes the Vandals were a bit more tight-lipped?

The Boise press has written extensively about the presidential search process including salary negotiations and spats between the committee and campus community over the hiring.

Idaho announced Wednesday that it will hire its previous top pick Kansas State University Provost Kevin Nellis in a surprising reversal after he initially rejected the school’s original compensation package and a mad scramble ensued to find the boosted salary demand.

The historic administration building at Colorado State University. (Photo/Jason Kosena)

The controversial search for the land grant university’s first system chancellor comes amid faculty and staff layoffs, a looming multi-million dollar budget shortfall and another round of expected state tuition hikes. But what good does a high-level executive ensconced in a Denver office bring to thousands of middle-class students and members of the dwindling ranks of tenured faculty at the Fort Collins and Pueblo campuses?

The Colorado State University chancellor search committee has reviewed roughly 12 applications and has received roughly 12 more, according to the university. The next meeting of the committee is scheduled for May 4 and it aims to hire a new chancellor by July 1. The committee refuses to release the applicants’ names and is likely to present just one, its top choice, for public review.

The speed and secrecy of the search and the restricted membership of the search committee, which is made up mostly of CSU current or former board members and corporate CEOs, has irked some observers and CSU students.

But the university argues that so-called stake-holder forums were held for the public before the search began and that high-caliber applicants would be reluctant to apply for the position if it was policy to reveal their names, according to Michele McKinney, a CSU public relations officer. The concern is that news of a failed application would land as a stain on their resumes.

But questions have followed the search from its inception.

McKinney acknowledges, for example, that it’s a “less-than-ideal time” for the university to be hiring a new expensive top executive. This year, and perhaps for years to come, the stability of state higher education budgets are anything but certain.

During the most recent financial quarter, CSU alone was forced to make millions of dollars in cuts, laying off at least 14 employees since the beginning of the year, including executives in the administration.

There are more cuts to come. The university is bracing for a projected $13.1 million shortfall on planned expenditures this year and continuing drops in state revenues had lawmakers last week considering a potentially devastating $300 million across-the-board cut to higher education. An 11th-hour compromise in the so-called long bill, or state budget, which determines public funding for state universities, preserves current higher education spending. The bill now heads to the governor’s desk, where it is subject to partial veto.

But CSU is plowing ahead and is set to hire not just any high-level official but the university’s highest-level executive officer: its first-ever stand-alone chancellor to oversee both campuses.

The decision to separate the university chancellorship from the Fort Collins presidency is a bold and some say baffling move that the public university has not genuinely been pressed to explain since it was first proposed last December. The finances of the decision are yet to be revealed, the salary and operating costs of the new office part of the fiscal year budget to be released this summer.

Penley scandal sets the chancellor search in motion

The CSU board decision to break the university chancellor position off from the Fort Collins campus presidency was made by unanimous vote in December, weeks after Larry Penley, then the Fort Collins president and university chancellor, resigned partly in reaction to revelations, first reported by the Colorado Independent, that he was redirecting massive amounts in revenues to his own office and staff and away from the faculty and students, bloating top executive and other salaries and compensation at the public institution in a manner reminiscent of recently disgraced Wall Street firms.

Then-Colorado State University President and Chancellor Larry Penley gives the 2008 State of the University address in Fort Collins. Penley resigned six weeks later while under fire for questionable budget and administrative decisions. (Photo/Jason Kosena)

Minutes of the meeting where the decision was made (posted Feb. 25. 2009) are merely overviews. Stephen Portch, retired chancellor of the University of Georgia who now consults on university executive searches, led discussion and had the board review options for the future administration structure of CSU, including proposals to leave the Fort Collins president as university chancellor and splitting the two positions.

People who were present at the board meeting refer all questions on the chancellor search to McKinney, who says the needs of the university’s fast-growing Pueblo campus suggested an adjustment in the administrative balance that would provide Pueblo with greater representation and that the need to have someone “with a deep Rolodex on the ground in Denver” was essential, someone to interact regularly with lawmakers and “to attend cocktail parties” with major potential donors.

“If we want to become the kind of preeminent institution we intend to become, we need someone in Denver,” she said.

Fort Collins’ loss is Pubelo’s gain

Gerry Bomotti, a former CSU financial officer who worked under Penley and presidential predecessor Al Yates, isn’t so sure.

“That’s bucking trends nationwide … it goes against the logic of most university systems, how schools choose to advance the university today,” he said.

One trend is to break up multi-campus university systems and emphasize their specialties, not consolidate them. The recent divisions among the state colleges of Nevada are example. Likewise, CSU used to oversee Fort Lewis College in Durango, which broke off in 2002 and established an independent board and regional professional programs.

The new CSU chancellorship is also likely both directly and indirectly to devalue the anchor campus at Fort Collins, which in administrative matters will now be on equal footing with Pueblo. Bomotti and other university administrators interviewed argue that that is no way to advance the university, including the Pueblo campus.

“You want to lift up that anchor campus — that raises all campuses. Fort Collins has the name. Fund raising is dependent on — not to demean Pueblo — but fund raising is dependent on programs people are interested in nationwide, the research being done, et cetera.”

Bomotti points to the interim presidency at Fort Collins held for now by Tony Frank. Should the university decide to fill the presidency, it will be difficult to recruit the best candidates because the office has in effect been degraded by the establishment of the new stand-alone chancellorship. Bomotti said anyone considering the presidency at Fort Collins will see it as a demoted position, where fund raising power and stature has faded, where there is more bureaucracy to deal with, where Fort Collins will be competing for attention and favors with the Pueblo campus and its president.

“This person will say ‘I’m on a parallel with Pueblo. I report to the chancellor.’ They’ll ask what all that means in trying to run the place. So how will they now recruit people of stature to the position, a candidate of national stature like an Al Yates, who was there when I was there?”

Yates was Fort Collins president and university chancellor for 13 years beginning in 1990.

McKinney said there is no decision yet on whether the university will conduct a search this year for a permanent Fort Collins president.

“First we have to hire a chancellor,” she said.

Continue reading part two of this investigative series at Little-known Denver office central to controversial CSU chancellor search

CSU Board of Governors members, from left, Marguerite Salazar, Ed Haselden and Joe Blake. Salazar and Haselden also serve on the chancellor search committee. (Photo/Colorado State University)

The CSU System Office, which is closely aligned with the university Board of Governors overseeing the chancellor search, has been a well-fed beneficiary of disgraced former president and chancellor Larry Penley, whose budget-shifting largesse bled academic and student services. The Denver office houses the general counsel, auditing and finance departments for the university’s Fort Collins, Pueblo and global campuses as well as seven staffers who provide various managerial support to the board. The System Office will also soon serve as the plush digs for the new chancellor.

“I find it bizarre, frankly,” said former CSU financial officer Gerry Bomotti of the decision to create a new top executive position at the university. “Money is so tight this year … it’s no time to be adding administrative layers. A conservative board would normally be looking to seriously cut administrative costs.”

Bomotti, who is currently senior vice president for finance and business for the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, estimates a new university chancellor position filled with a top candidate who is determined to succeed will require hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars.

“You have to presume this person will not be working alone from his or her car,” Bomotti said.

University spokeswoman Michele McKinney said the CSU board has kept a vigilant eye on the strained budget while conducting the search. The committee declined to go the normal route and hire a search firm, for example, which likely saved about $100,000. She also downplayed the notion that the position will increase administrative spending without generating proportional benefits to the faculty and students. She said the chancellor will lean instead on existing staff at the CSU System Office, particularly on the university system’s chief financial officer and general counsel.

“This will not be a bureaucratic position,” McKinney said. “I believe the chancellor will come in with an assistant, one assistant, and that’s it.”

It will have to be an assistant who can juggle a busy calendar. McKinney told The Colorado Independent that the ideal candidate for chancellor would be someone “with a deep Rolodex on the ground in Denver” with the ability to interact regularly with lawmakers and “to attend cocktail parties” with major potential donors.

But given the secrecy surrounding the search, establishing an expanded chancellorship designed to curry favor in Denver might be difficult to sell to students and faculty enduring some of the most sorely strained finances in the university’s history.

Last month, CSU trimmed the System Office staff by eliminating two executives, an associate vice president for marketing and a legislative liaison, to save an estimated $210,000 in salary.

McKinney said CSU did not make the cuts to free up money for the new positions.

“We felt that we had to make cuts, that the [budget] crisis was real, and so we should take the lead on that.”

It’s difficult to calculate the present budgetary requirements of the CSU System Office in Denver. The way the Budgets office breaks out operating budget summaries has evolved in the last few years, for example, making direct year-to-year comparisons difficult. And the places where the president’s office or other offices or services might overlap with the System Office is unclear in information that’s available to the public. CSU spokesman Brad Bohlander has yet to return calls to the Colorado Independent for clarification.

The documents do, however, list expenditure for “CSU System Office Support” at $4.7 million for the 2009 fiscal year. That’s up $500,000 from the 2008 budget.

Meanwhile, students are bracing for further tuition and fee hikes in the face of a projected $13.1 million shortfall on planned expenditures this year. Lawmakers averted a potentially devastating $300 million across-the-board cut to higher education but the so-called long bill, or state budget, which determines public funding for state universities. A last minute budget compromise was reached in the legislature that will preserve current funding for higher education. The bill now moves to the governor, where sections may be vetoed.

Yet the chancellor search committee, mostly free of public scrutiny, soldiers on in its effort to hire a new expensive top executive at the land-grant university.

Garrett Holbrook, president of the university’s student government association and member of UI’s presidential search committee, told The Argonaut that he received e-mails demanding Penley be removed from consideration as soon as the former CSU president’s name was released publicly.

“As soon as we put him on the list, people started saying things about him,” Holbrook said. “Frankly, on paper, he is a good candidate.”

The Idaho search controversy was sparked by TCI’s probe of Penley’s CSU administration, an investigation that raised serious questions about his budget priorities and the land-grant university’s ability to fulfill its core mission to offer an affordable education to the state’s working-class families.

Our three-part investigative series focused on the probity of Penley’s tenure that shifted millions of dollars in state funds away from the academic colleges and library system, while beefing up the school’s athletics department and nearly tripling the budget of his own Office of the President. Shocked legislators and faculty members questioned Penley’s budget swap-outs, which caused student fees to increase by a whopping 71 percent and undergraduate tuition by 52 percent since 2003.

Penley tendered his resignation from the university Nov. 5, the same day the campus newspaper, the Rocky Mountain Collegian, revealed John Lincoln, a top CSU executive and close associate of Penley’s from their days together at Arizona State University, received a $10,000-per-month sweetheart consulting deal. In October, Lincoln retired from the president’s office with a $70,000 golden parachute and a plum gig to — ironically — strengthen the university’s public affairs and communications outreach.

The UI search committee is now down to two candidates. Penley is pitted against University of Idaho law school Dean Don Burnett.

The leading candidate, Kansas State University Provost Duane Nellis, rejected the search committee’s salary offer, which is rumored to be in the neighborhood of $300,000 per year. The second top contender, Montana State University Provost David Dooley, dropped out Monday after citing a difference in vision with the Idaho State Board of Education, according to the Argonaut.

Penley beat feet out of CSU in November after The Colorado Independent raised serious questions about his budget priorities and the land-grant university’s ability to fulfill its core mission to offer an affordable education to the state’s working class families.

The three-part investigative series focused on the probity of Penley’s tenure that shifted millions of dollars in state funds away from the academic colleges and library system, while beefing up the school’s athletics department and nearly tripling the budget of his own Office of the President. Shocked legislators and faculty members questioned Penley’s budget swap-outs, which caused student fees to increase by a whopping 71 percent and undergraduate tuition by 52 percent since 2003.

Penley tendered his resignation from the university Nov. 5, the same day the campus newspaper, the Rocky Mountain Collegian, revealed John Lincoln, a top CSU executive and close associate of Penley’s from their days together at Arizona State University, received a $10,000 per month sweetheart consulting deal. In October, Lincoln retired from the president’s office with a $70,000 golden parachute and a plum gig to–ironically–strengthen the university’s public affairs and communications outreach.

Citing an Associated Press story, blogger 123Idaho at 43rdStateBlues.com writes today that Idaho’s leading candidate, Kansas State University provost Duane Nellis, rejected the search committee’s salary offer, which is rumored to be in the neighborhood of $300,000 per year and the Idaho State Board of Education refused Nellis’ undisclosed counter proposal.

Which makes the possibility of Penley taking the position all the more intriguing. A Chronicle of Higher Education compensation survey pegged then-CSU President Penley’s base pay at $389,000 — substantially higher than what is likely to be offered by Idaho.

Penley is now pitted against University of Idaho law school dean Don Burnett and Montana State University Provost David Dooley, who was invited to the Moscow, Idaho, campus for an interview last month.

Buescher was on tap to become Colorado’s next speaker of the House until the Grand Junction Democrat lost his reelection bid to newcomer Laura Bradford. Since then, he’s one of 20 who have applied to become Colorado Secretary of State, filling out the term of Republican Mike Coffman, who won a congressional seat and is running off to Washington.

Buescher, who served on the Joint Budget Committee while in the House, has also expressed interest in becoming the next president of Colorado State University, a job that opened up when Larry Penley unexpectedly stepped down in the middle of the semester.

And now PolitickerCO is reporting that Buescher, an attorney, would also be willing to become the next U.S. attorney for Colorado.

“I haven’t thought about it,” Buescher is quoted as saying by the online news source. “It’s a great job — it’s an administrative job more than a litigative job.”

Give that guy a job! Better yet, give him three!

The historic administration building at Colorado State University. (Photo/Jason Kosena)

Though Board of Governors members themselves have remained tight-lipped, McKinney says her bosses still need to do the planning necessary to begin the search for a new leader for the state’s second-largest public university.

“This isn’t going to happen with one phone call,” McKinney says.

Still, the current make-up of the Board of Governors, along with the recent trend in Colorado of appointing former lawmakers to head up major universities and colleges, has made some people plenty nervous about the possibility that Allard could be CSU’s next president.

He may be a proud Ram alum, but Allard, a conservative Republican, has a dismal record of supporting programs that benefit higher education and the environment, which CSU has worked hard to embrace in recent years.

Though partisanship isn’t supposed to be an issue when it comes to making a presidential selection, six of the nine members of CSU’s Board of Governors were appointed by former Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican. They include: Jones, Joe Blake, Bonifacio Casyleon, Phyllis “Diane” Evans, Pat Grant and Ed Haselden.

Two members have been appointed by current Gov. Bill Ritter, a Democrat, including Tom Farley and Patrick McConathy. The ninth member, Marguerite Salazar, was appointed to fill out an open seat by the board.

While members of the Board of Governors remain mum on the prospect, others have already raised vocal opposition to a potential Allard presidency. The liberal group ProgressNow has already begun circulating a petition opposing Allard.

Jim Martin, the former Republican trustee for the University of Colorado, is also critical about a potential Allard presidency.

Allard has received failing grades from education groups for his votes on key pieces of education-related legislation, Martin notes. For example, Allard received an “F” rating from the National Education Association for his votes opposing everything from Pell Grants to Head Start funding. Allard has also favored abolishing the federal Department of Education.

In addition, Martin wonders whether anyone but him realizes the irony of even thinking about appointing someone with Allard’s environmental record to head up a university that has spent millions re-branding itself as a green university.

“Wayne Allard has the worst environmental record in the U.S. Senate,” Martin says. “He still denies and has publicly denied global warming exists.

“He also has a very limited ability to raise money — he’s never really had to raise money, he’s not like [CU President] Bruce Benson.

“He’s a kind and humble man, but as we welcome Wayne Allard back to the state of Colorado, there are many places that his skills now can be utilized for the benefit of the state,” Martin said. “The presidency of one of our major research universities is not one of them.”

Other possible candidates: Buescher? Hank Brown? Condi Rice?
On Nov. 6, Penley, the president and chancellor of the state’s second-largest university system, abruptly resigned his position, ending his five-year reign. Penley will be paid $389,000 for one year of his remaining contract with CSU, which expires in 2010. His resignation, effective Nov. 30, came two months after an investigation by The Colorado Independent highlighted Penley’s efforts to shift state funds away from the university’s academic colleges and library system while injecting cash into the school’s Athletics Department and nearly tripling the budget of his own Office of the President.

In addition to Allard, state Rep. Bernie Buescher, a Democrat who lost his reelection bid earlier this month, has also reportedly expressed interest in the suddenly vacant job. But, McKinney notes with her tongue in cheek, plenty of retiring lawmakers and other community leaders are also in the job market these days — how about former U.S. Sen. Hank Brown, who’s already been president of the University of Northern Colorado and the University of Colorado?

Or former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright? “Condi Rice will be out of a job pretty soon,” McKinney pointed out. “Both [Rice and Albright] have ties to Colorado.”

The Board of Governors plans to meet Dec. 2-3, McKinney said, to determine how they will move forward to select Penley’s replacement.

Last week, board member Bonifacio Cosyleon told The Denver Post that he’s “not an Allard fan. . . . I want a meteoric person, a drive, the dynamo. For me, Wayne Allard doesn’t have that.”

When asked to further clarify his thoughts on the possibility of an Allard appointment this week, Cosyleon told the Colorado Independent, “That’s in the paper — that’s out there, and I’ll leave what I said at that,” and referred further questions about the process by which the board will select CSU’s next leader to president Jones.

“The rumor mill is running rampant, and I’m trying to remain as objective as I can be,” Cosyleon said. “I have to say, it’s just too early to speculate.”

Likewise, board member Salazar referred questions to Jones. Asked whether she would potentially be supportive of either Allard or Beuscher, Salazar declined comment.

“It would be too premature to say anything,” she said. “Our agreement was to direct inquiries to Doug Jones — we haven’t really talked about it; we’ll meet in December.”

Jones did not return a call seeking comment but instead referred the call to the board’s spokesman, McKinney, who reiterated that it’s far too premature for speculation — either for Allard, for Beuscher or anyone else.

“They have not met as a board to discuss the selection process,” she said.

One of the items of business the board plans to tackle in early December is a proposal to potentially restructure the leadership role at CSU.

Currently the president of the university also serves as chancellor to the college’s three separate campuses, which are in Fort Collins, Pueblo and online. On the table is the possibility that the next CEO would serve as the chancellor overseeing the three campuses, but that each campus would have a separate president, McKinney said.