January 22, 2010 in City

Panel hopes to ease university hiring

Idaho board wants end to ban on hiring spouses

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Arthur Vailas
(Full-size photo)

BOISE – The State Board of Education aims to undo a law forbidding Idaho university presidents’ spouses from being hired at the schools.

The board argues the law is hurting efforts to attract and retain leaders and stifling intellectual contributions of husbands or wives forced to abandon their own academic careers.

The ban has affected Laura Vailas, wife of Idaho State University President Arthur Vailas. The Ph.D. nutritionist couldn’t apply for an $85,000 post at ISU recently, for fear of running afoul of Idaho’s bribery and corruption statutes, Mark Browning, an Ed Board spokesman, told the House Education Committee on Thursday.

Lawmakers agreed to schedule a hearing for the bill.

But some, including Rep. Bob Nonini, the Republican committee chair from Coeur d’Alene, said it could put Idaho schools at risk of nepotism charges. Idaho presidents took jobs with annual salaries of more than $300,000 knowing their spouses couldn’t go on the university payroll, he said. “Now they want their wives going to work pulling down 70, 90, 100 thousand dollars?” he asked. “That bothers me.”

Still, presidential hiring experts said Idaho’s restriction appears broader than rules in place in many other states.

In an era where husband-and-wife academics and administrators are in demand, such a limitation could eventually hurt recruiting efforts, said Sheldon Steinbach, a Washington-based lawyer who has worked on college presidential hiring issues for four decades. “Common sense needs to dictate what each unique situation requires,” he said.

Other states – including Washington, Virginia, Texas, Missouri and Nevada – allow such arrangements, with provisions to avoid conflicts. For instance, the husband of University of Virginia’s new president got a job at the law school.

In addition to Laura Vailas, a Ph.D. who was an associate dean at the University of Houston, Idaho’s existing law also would prevent Ruth Nellis from working at the University of Idaho in Moscow, where her husband, Duane Nellis, was named president in April. She had been employed at Kansas State University.

The remote location of Idaho’s public four-year schools means there are almost no opportunities for spouses to find academic jobs at nearby institutions, Browning said. ISU, for instance, is 78 miles from Brigham Young University-Idaho in Rexburg and 105 miles from Utah State University in Logan.

Though the State Board of Education has pledged to accompany any changes with policies to prevent conflicts like a spouse working directly under the president, Nonini fears the link would still be too cozy. For instance, would the dean of a college at an Idaho university really be willing to discipline a president’s spouse?

And Rep. Tom Trail, R-Moscow, has gotten negative feedback from UI faculty and staff who feel such a change is another example of expansion of presidential power, at a time when tight finances are forcing academic programs to scaled back.

“They would see this as another blow along the way of losing status and holding up the privileges of the president’s office,” Trail said.

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