January 22, 2020

BOISE — The Idaho Senate Education Committee is considering a bill that would decrease the number of finalists that public state universities must name in presidential searches.

The proposed legislation creates a new exemption in the public records law that would only require the names of three finalists for public four-year postsecondary institution president positions, rather than five.

For non-classified positions in state government, the Idaho Public Records Act requires the public disclosure of five finalists from the pool of applicants. Non-classified positions include those such as university administrators and teaching staff, employees of the court system and corrections department, or employees of constitutional officers like the governor or state treasurer. If there are fewer than five applicants for a non-classified position, the law requires that all of them must be disclosed and named as finalists.

The bill was presented to the committee last week by Mike Keckler, Chief Communications and Legislative Affairs Officer for the State Board of Education.

“It is often difficult to come up with a list of five viable president finalists,” Keckler told the committee. “The Board has hired new presidents at each of our four-year institutions over the last year and a half, so these challenges are fresh in our minds.”

Keckler said that the high number of finalists even contributed to the Board’s difficulties in filling the president positions.

“During these most recent searches, we found that some candidates were reluctant to publicly be named as a finalist because they knew they were one of five candidates, and doing the math realized they probably had about a twenty percent chance of being named president,” said Keckler. “They feared that by being named publicly it would jeopardize their current employment. We encountered that with just about all of our searches.”

Keckler also told the committee that narrowing the number of finalists from five to three would mean fewer candidates for the universities to bring from across the country and host for open forums with campus and community members, thus lowering costs during the hiring process.

The bill clearly states that this smaller number of finalists only applies to university presidents and no other positions in state government.

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This story was published in the Argonaut and played on KUOI 89.3 FM by University of Idaho Student Media.

Committee Considers Narrowing Presidential Search Finalists

Podcast assignment in the style of This American Life for JAMM 122 at the University of Idaho.

Music: "Run Amok"
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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Anchors: Ryan O'Callaghan-Kisch & Logan Finney
Producer: Nina Rydalch
Editor: Hunter Diehl