Next Chancellor of U. System of Georgia Is Republican Lawmaker

April 22, 2011, 12:54 pm

Rep. Henry (Hank) M. Huckaby, a Republican state legislator in Georgia, is the sole finalist to be chancellor of the 35-campus University System of Georgia, the Board of Regents announced today. Representative Huckaby retired in 2006, after a long career in the university system, as senior vice president for finance and administration at the University of Georgia. He would succeed Erroll B. Davis Jr., who announced last fall that he planned to retire this June. State law requires the board to wait 14 days after naming finalists to officially vote on an appointment.

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barbarashell

Headline seems to suggest the appointment is all about politics. Give the guy some credit – VP Finance for the flagship isn’t too shabby. It could have just as easily read: Former VP Finance and Admin to head Georgia University System. Im just as liberal as most anyone, but this seemed a little over the top even for me.
ihardin

I would agree with the previous comment. The headline seems to imply that the appointment has to do with his newly elected position. I doubt that anyone in the state of Georgia who knows him well believes that to be the case. Mr. Huckaby was a very respected part of the University of Georgia while he was here. I believe most faculty here will applaud the choice, and not just because he was one of us.
willynilly

Don’t be fooled by his former position in the System. That was also a political appointment. His staff did all the real work. He is just another nut-ball, extreme right-wing appointee who has no business operating the System. God help the students in the system, and the faculty, support staff and administrators who have conscientiously dedicated their careers to this system. They now must stand by and watch as nutty new policies, more directed at budget cutting than educating students, are forced on them. The only real antidote to this craziness is to have students leave the system, or not enroll in the first place. They will likely find a state where non-politicized, nut-ball directed, higher education is available.
11185500

Y’all, this is what is called “Southern Cooking.” “The sole finalist” said it all. I loved the South, I left the South, I will never return to the South because of exactly this kind of institutional corruption. Sad outlook for the University of Georgia System and its students….they deserve better.
tee_bee

Ok, so which is it? Right wing hack? Or experienced academic administrator? Or both? There’s four comments, and seriously divergent opinions. This wouldn’t be unique for any high-level hire, of course.
quiero_leer

Dig this backgrounder: Behind the Hedges: Big Money and Power Politics at the University of Georgia, written by late Pulitzer Prizewinner Richard Witt, and partially available on Google Books. Search “Hank Huckaby.” Business as usual in the USG.

Huckaby was pulling down $118K a year at UGA, but apparently snagged a couple of five-figure speakers’ fees, according to Witt’s book. He also is a strong proponent of keeping retirement plan info confidential. And he owns three properties (including a lake house), each valued at about $200K+, according to his 2009 campaign finance disclosure report:

http://www.ethics.georgia.gov/Reports/Financial/Financial_BYNameResults.aspx?LastName=Huckaby&FirstName=&City=&FilerID=&OfficeStatus=0&OfficeName=&District=&Post=&Circuit=&Division=&Type=Name

By the way, fresh frosh Huckaby was just promoted from Gov. Nathan Deal’s legislative floor team. Pretty speedy promotion, that. Given Deal’s zeal for ideologically-driven budget-butchering, I predict trouble.

He also has an “A” record on gun ownership legislation. Can’t wait for students to start packing on campus.

I’m moving and taking my tax dollars with me.
cwinton

The “good old boys” systems is alive and well in Georgia. Sole finalist says it all.
nuckollsr

The whole premise of this article is flawed. The question to be considered is, “How did our nation arrive at this sorry state where a cadre’ of elites in Washington acquired so much power over the productive to choose winners and losers in the game of life?” Our system of taxation is not about generating revenue. It’s about picking winners and losers. It’s about tools of favor by which politicians buy votes to stay in power.

The present system, if you want to grace it with that description, has a cost of compliance in the hundreds of $billion$ per year. These billions are sucked out of the free-exchange-of-value system and nullified as certainly as if they were burned in a fire. Well, not completely destroyed. Book keepers do get to use that cash at the grocery store. But at the same time, collections from the ‘system’ are spent in ways that would horrify the founding fathers.

Keep in mind that those who hold such power over our lives and fortunes are delighted that we expend our time and emotional capital on discussions like this. Far better that we scrap over the bones of a dying system than figure out ways to keep it alive. As long as we’re distracted from the real issues, individuals in Washington will continue to reap the benefits of our labors without themselves having to break a sweat. It’s the prestidigitator’s art of misdirection. Except that the stars of the magic show are not pulling rabbits out of a hat, they’re pulling dollars out of our pockets.
cwinton

The many ways statistical data can be twisted to promote an agenda never ceases to amaze me. “In 1999-2001, none of the benefits went to those making more than
$100,000 but from 2007-2009, nearly one quarter of the benefits flowed
to these families.” Well, duh, the ceiling to qualify for the credit is inflation adjusted, so families with an income of more than $100,000 now qualify for the tax benefit, so of course their piece of the pie has risen, from 0% in 1999 to whatever it is today. The benefit is not some fixed pool of money, so the higher ceiling to qualify does not mean families making less than $100,000 are receiving any less, as some might suppose from this author’s use of language (where he implicitly suggests the benefits flow from poorer families to those better off). One can only suppose this author and others of his ilk are shills for the for-profit education sector or those who profit from the student loan program, as revealed by his closing of “allow higher-education tax credits to expire and plow proceeds into Pell Grants”, which rather obviously would increase the pot of money the education scam artists and loan sharks are feeding on.
darccity

Agreed. But opponents who paint everything as instruments of the devil give comfort to the other side by allowing them to defend the few parts of the tax code that makes any sense. Tax credits for higher ed is one of them. The primary downside to it is to bid up tuition and reduce tuition assistance aid, thus shifting a portion of taxpayer subsidy into the hands of college administrators and prof salaries (already at record highs at private universities).

You are correct about most of the rest. Still, it will be discounted as class warfare ravings unless directed at reforming the most odious aspects of the system, such as oil and Wall St. subsidies. The other way you’ve been deluded is in believing the Federal government has a major impact on education quality, access, or funding. Those decisions occur at the state level, and few voters participate or petition state legislatures and governors.

It is not a shell game. The pea is and always has been under the shell marked State Gov’t. Finally, the media and blogs exposed ALEC’s cookie-cutter legislation that turned “federalism” states rights into a total fraud. The extent of voter and media cluelessness is exemplified by labeling Marco Rubio as inexperienced. My lord! As speaker of the Florida House, he (and not then Gov. Charlie Crist) was one of the 5 most powerful elected leaders in America. Boehner, by comparison, is a weak figurehead. Just because cable news and the blogs think Washington is important doesn’t make it so. Unless you want a funding takeover by D.C. of education (the right thing, but good luck with that!), all reform must be at the state level. And one-party legislatures are busy “reforming” higher ed the opposite way.