A proposal to change how board members are put in place to lead Michigan’s “Big Three” public universities failed Wednesday in the state House as GOP leaders were unable to muster the supermajority needed to put the question on the August ballot.
Right now, board members are nominated at party conventions before being elected by the public. The proposal would put the power to appoint board members in the hands of the governor instead.
The change requires an amendment to the state constitution, which needs voter approval.
The proposal is an effort to address board-level dysfunction at the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne State University. The concept has been endorsed by Governor Gretchen Whitmer and former governors John Engler and Jim Blanchard. All are MSU alums and Blanchard also attended law school at U of M.
The vote failed on a vote of 52 in favor and 54 opposed – a tight margin, but nowhere near the two-thirds majority of 74 votes needed to get the question on the August ballot. Only one Democrat voted in favor of putting the question on the ballot.
House Minority Leader Ranjiv Puree (D-Canton) said Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Township) badly miscalculated by putting the measure up for a vote without warning or negotiating. He noted six Republicans broke ranks and voted against it.
“His own members turned it down and so I don’t know what type of 4-D tic-tac-toe he’s trying to play here, but setting a bill up for failure on the board very publicly, I can’t explain why he’d want to do that,” Puri said following the vote.
The proposal would have removed all the current members of the U of M, WSU and MSU boards. Whitmer would appoint just over half of the new members on her final day in office. Her successor would fill the remaining vacancies on January 1.
Hall said he wanted to get the proposal over to the Senate in time to make the August ballot.
“And we’re trying to put this on the ballot today to give the people the ability to decide whether we should come up with a new process to select our university boards so we have people who are much more qualified to do it,” he said.
Hall said it is still possible to get a question on the November ballot, which will have at least one other proposal. But Hall said he plans to negotiate a tougher plan to also abolish an elected state board of education.
