Public officials are
not always dishonest and self-interested. Sometimes, they are simply afraid to
tell people the truth. I think we saw examples last week.

News reporting
belatedly disclosed that the University of Central Arkansas Board of Trustees
had decided in a closed meeting in May to speed up a deferred compensation plan
approved for UCA President Lu Hardin in 2005.

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The plan gave Hardin
$60,000 a year if he stayed five years. Not quite three years into the deal,
rumblings began that Hardin might be hired away. That wouldn’t be surprising.
He’s been a marketing dynamo at UCA. Growth in enrollment and test scores of
students prove it.

The fear of losing Hardin
prompted the Board to draft a new contract for him. It was to include a paid
sabbatical and other so-far-unrevealed perks. The Board wasn’t ready to approve
the whole package in May. Led by trustee Rush Harding, a split board decided
“as a gesture of good faith,” according to Harding, to pay Hardin’s deferred
comp early. But that $300,000 payment was never announced and specifically
ratified in public, probably because the Board froze faculty pay and raised
tuition the same day. It likely feared disclosing Hardin’s deal in that
climate.

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I think the law
required a specific vote on the $300,000 payout. The action also raised
questions about compliance with the statutory cap on college president pay —
with bonus, 125 percent of Hardin’s $253,000 statutory maximum. For the year,
he will be paid $553,000.

The Board believes it
acted legally by approving a general motion on everything discussed in private.
It also argues that since payment of the bonus came from a discretionary fund
it created from campus book and food service profits, the source wasn’t public
money. I disagree. The board plans to seek an attorney general’s opinion. It
also plans to reveal expenditures under another newly discovered special rule —
the Board gave its chairman the right to cut checks up to $5,000 without even
Board approval, all exempt from public disclosure.

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Imagine if the Little
Rock
School Board set up an auxiliary fund from
vending machine profits to be spent secretly at its discretion and with a
$5,000 check-writing authority held solely by the School Board president.

Trustee Harding says
now that he wishes the Board had acted on Hardin’s bonus in public. He’s
confident that full disclosure of Board expenses will meet public approval and
says future expenditures will be public. He’s also confident that Hardin’s
value to UCA far exceeds the bonus.

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Little Rock City
Manager Bruce Moore could say much the same about his unilateral decision,
recently disclosed by the Democrat-Gazette, to waive building permit and street
closing fees for the new River Market Tower condo. It’s a defensible benefit
for a project that contributes mightily to the city’s long goal of downtown
redevelopment.

But a waiver of city
ordinances should be a matter for public vote by the City Board. For whatever reason,
City Hall feared it. It likely would have drawn some criticism, just as
Hardin’s bonus would have drawn criticism. But it’s likely, too, that each
proposal would have met general approval if explained and defended up front.

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Instead, secret
deal-making eroded faith in a government of the people. It smacked of
government of and by a few — for insiders. The long-term damage is not
inconsequential.

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