Last week, we reported on Western Wyoming Community College trustee Carla Hester-Croff’s resignation following her claims of the college administration not being transparent and her concerns about a proposed board policy expanding on how a trustee could be removed from the board.
While our interactions with the college have shown its board of trustees and administration to work towards maintain a transparent relationship, we believe the proposed policy should have some changes made before it is adopted by the board of trustees.
We applaud the move to identify situations where a trustee should be removed. A string of absences without notifying the President of the board, is inexcusable in any circumstance. Similarly, identifying situations where a trustee is convicted of either two misdemeanor charges or a single felony charge as grounds for removal is something to be lauded as these elected positions are positions of trust and those elected to represent the public should be held to a higher standard.
What should change are situations involved with the complaint system the policy creates. As written, the policy allows for trustees, college employees and residents of the college district to file a complaint against a trustee with the board President or Western’s President, which would then start a process where a hearing is scheduled and the compliant heard by a committee of trustees. That committee would then write a recommendation regarding the trustee in question, which the board could then act on by removing that trustee with a two-thirds vote.
First, we don’t think the college’s President should be involved in this process as the board of trustees are the people who oversee that position, allowing an employee to hear complaints about their immediate supervisors.
This is easily remedied as a drop box the board President has sole access to could be used to deliver a complaint about a trustee.
Additionally, two of the three groups should not be included in this complaint system, with language allowing trustees and residents the opportunity to file complaints removed from the policy. With trustees, we see a situation where a bloc of trustees could manipulate the system to remove unpopular trustees as a means of solidifying its power on the board. Politics can be messy, even for nonpartisan groups like the WWCC Board of Trustees. Removing that clause would protect trustees who may have unpopular views regarding the direction of the college.
For residents, they already have a means of replacing trustees -- the election process. The policy, even with the omissions we propose, give the board a tremendous amount reach when determining if a trustee should be removed -- especially with the language allowing removal for “other cause for which the Board finds to be just cause.”
If people are upset with a trustee over their representation on the board or for any other reason, trustees will face opponents in their re-election bids. If voters don’t like how the board or trustee is performing their duties, the incumbents will not be re-elected. That is the political process as it is supposed to work.
However, we don’t think the system should be scrapped completely and believe college employees should have the ability for file complaints against trustees. Over the years, we have heard of situations with some elected officials where they allegedly give government employees direction outside of the established chain of command. Those employees never go on the record for the obvious fear of losing their jobs, but we’ve become convinced it does happen. This and other employee-trustee situations could be addressed through the proposed complaint system.
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