Iowa regents make about-face, vote on new 2017 meeting schedule

IOWA CITY - After saying it would not vote publicly to change a new 2017 meeting schedule approved last summer, the Board of Regents made another about face Tuesday by voting unanimously in open session to decrease the number of total meetings it will hold this year.

Board Executive Director Robert Donley last week, through a spokesman, told The Gazette the board has 'no plans” to vote to scale down its approved 2017 meeting schedule from 14 mostly one-day meetings to eight two-day meetings.

But about four minutes before the board's 9:30 a.m. meeting was scheduled to start Tuesday, the regents called their meeting to order and did just that.

Before the vote, board President Bruce Rastetter explained the board initially separated its full meetings from its committee meetings, like the property and facilities committee and the academic and student affairs committee, to give regents more time to consider issues presented at committee before formally approving them as a full board.

The new schedule, while it collapses the schedule back into two-day meetings that include one day for committees and one day for the full board, is different in that committee items won't be approved until the following board meeting.

That means something that comes up in a February committee meeting won't be approved until the April board meeting.

'So one of the challenges for all of us in the board office and at the universities is to make sure we don't fall behind on things that need to be approved,” Rastetter said Tuesday. 'We're going to have to get out in front of that.”

But, he said, this new structure 'gives more transparency on what the board's doing.”

'We're not voting on one thing one day and then the next day officially passing it,” he said. 'Plus, it gives us all time to read and be more knowledgeable.”

The board came out with and approved its new and busier 2017 meeting schedule in July after The Gazette in June reported on an internal email from the board office to the universities informing them it was planning to cut its total meetings from seven or eight to four a year.

But after The Gazette earlier this month reported the 2017 schedule posted publicly did not match the schedule approved last summer, Rastetter said the board would vote to amend it. Then, last week, Executive Director Donley said the board would not vote on the new schedule.

The Board of Regents has been criticized for its transparency in recent years, with some members of the university communities it oversees repeatedly calling for time on the board's agenda for public comment. The board years ago started holding public comment hearings on the campuses the week the before their meetings.

But those hearings involve speakers talking into a camera - no regents are present. The video recordings are made available to board members, but the board office does not confirm the regents actually watch the recordings.