Regents plan investigation of Chancellor Klaich

The chairman of the Nevada Board of Regents is seeking an outside expert to investigate whether Chancellor Dan Klaich killed research critical of his administration.

Regents Chairman Rick Trachok told the Review-Journal Thursday in an email that he is identifying and evaluating national higher education experts to conduct an investigation of the chancellor’s conduct. Klaich serves at the pleasure of the 13-member board. The regents, who are are elected by district, elect a chairman and a vice chairman.

Trachok has said he plans to retain the expert as soon as possible and the investigation results would be made public. He has not said how long the process would take.

“I understand his decision and fully support it,” Klaich wrote in an email to the Review-Journal Thursday. “I welcome an objective review of the facts.”

The Review-Journal last week reported that Klaich in 2014 hired the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems to review the College of Southern Nevada and recommend a way for Klaich’s office to continue governing the state’s four community colleges. But email between Klaich, the consultant and other state higher education officials show the chancellor didn’t like the consultant’s criticism of his operation and demanded a rewrite of the report. The Colorado think-tank’s contract for the work was to pay as much as $27,700.

Trachok’s move for an outside investigation follows one regent disagreeing with Trachok’s characterization of the situation and another saying he is losing confidence in Klaich.

Trachok had previously told the Review-Journal he had requested all relevant documents and would dig into the issue, but added that he felt the “operative fact” was that the report in question hadn’t been killed because many of its recommendations were discussed openly over the past year.

Saying the report wasn’t quashed just because its recommendations were adopted isn’t a fair portrayal as it misses key context, said Regent Allison Stephens on June 30.

Emails show Klaich had intended to present the report to a 2014 legislative interim committee that was considering pulling the community colleges out from under the regents’ purview. But when the researchers were critical of continued management of the schools by Klaich’s agency, the chancellor and his staff demanded that the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems rewrite it. But even after a rewrite that Klaich in emails described as “believable,” the report remained under wraps.

Stephens served on the interim committee that was to receive the report. Saying many of the recommendations were adopted ignores that there was a serious threat that the system would radically change, she said.

Stephens said she felt the committee came to the right conclusion, but that doesn’t mean the allegations aren’t troubling and need to be addressed.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to just jump to the chancellor’s defense,” Stephens said previously. “It’s unfortunate because in the end he was trying to protect the very system he’s now undermined, if those allegations turn out to be true.”

Regent Mark Doubrava, who has said he’s losing confidence in Klaich, on Thursday called the investigation a “pretty good first step.”

He said he understands, based on a memo from Trachok, that the investigation will be limited to the quashed report.

That isn’t stopping Doubrava from digging deeper into the chancellor’s conduct with consultants, though his board’s own rules will make his own investigation challenging, he said.

Doubrava said he plans to ask for a list of consultants and their pay.

He has said he is particularly troubled because the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, the Colorado-based think-tank at the center of the controversy, helped overhaul the state’s complicated higher education funding formula.

Doubrava said he would like to see emails from the time the funding formula was being done, but a Board of Regents rule limits regent access to information. Doubrava said rule is that the full board must approve any individual regent’s request for information if it would take more than six hours of staff time.

Doubrava said the six hour rule came out of Regent Ron Knecht’s voracious appetite for numbers. Although there was a real argument that Knecht was abusing the system Doubrava said he voted against the six hour rule.

“I said it would be used against us and lo and behold it had been used against me for medical school information,” Doubrava said, explaining he’d asked for information that he thought staff would have on hand about the existing clinical enterprise of the University of Nevada School of Medicine in Las Vegas.

“It really does make you wonder what our powers are,” Doubrava said. “But the office is the office. I think you know going in to be a regent you have no authority unless you’re a board — so as a single regent you really do have no authority and I think NSHE kind of sees that as ‘Yeah keep ‘em divided.’”

Klaich is paid a base annual salary of $303,000, a car allowance of $8,000, a housing allowance of $24,000 and a “host allowance” of $10,000. His contract is up in November 2016.

Contact Bethany Barnes at bbarnes@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861. Find her on Twitter: @betsbarnes