University System Proposes Exempting Personnel Reviews Of Presidents From Open Records

At today’s meeting of the State Board of Higher Education Chancellor Larry Skogen announced a list of proposed bills for the upcoming session of the Legislature next year. Among them, as you can see from this tweet from the official NDUS account, is an exemption from open records laws for personnel reviews of the university presidents:

I think an exemption for auditor draft work is reasonable – I don’t think there’s any need for that sort of thing to be public until it is finalized – but exempting personnel reviews for the university presidents?

The university presidents are some of the highest-paid public employees in our state. They wield enormous power over large areas of state spending and education policy. Many, including myself, would argue that many of the problems in our university system have their roots in out-of-control university presidents who are too difficult to govern. Who have far too little accountability to elected leaders in this state.

Exempting their personnel reviews from open records requests further isolates them from accountability.