Michigan’s State Senate, voting largely along party lines, has rejected 14 of Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm’s appointments to the governing boards of public colleges and universities in the state, The Grand Rapids Press reported. The unusual move was not about the appointees’ qualificiations, the chamber’s Republican leaders said, but about who should have the authority to appoint them. The appointees would replace trustees whose terms expire at midnight on December 31, about 12 hours before Governor Granholm, a Democrat, will leave office. “These appointments should be reserved for the next governor,” a spokesman for Sen. Michael D. Bishop, a Republican and the chamber’s majority leader, told the newspaper last week.
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One Response to Michigan Senate Blocks Governor’s Appointments to University Boards
sanjoaquin - April 29, 2010 at 11:13 am
Yes, it’s too bad that the current statutory authority is not designed purely to benefit the discretionary power of a single party (sarcasm alert). This whole democracy thing is so inconvenient.More seriously, it’s very sad in my opinion to see public higher education held hostage to political grandstanding, no matter how often it happens or who is doing it. Call me old-fashioned, but it benefits a democracy to have a broadly educated electorate, and it benefits a capitalist-ish economy to have a deeply educated workforce.