Usually slowing down further a sluggishly-moving legal development is no cause for celebration, but the Idaho Supreme Court has offered an exception in the case of Labrador v. Board of Education. As - maybe - the Idaho Legislature may do as well.
The legal case schedule was set by the Idaho Supreme Court, which plans oral argument in June concerning the challenge by Attorney General Raul Labrador to the state Board of Education on open meeting grounds, in its effort to approve affiliation of the University of Phoenix with the University of Idaho.
That timing matters because, as the Idaho Ed News (as part of its terrific reporting on the affiliation) said, “the $685 million Phoenix purchase faces a non-binding May 31 deadline. If the deal isn’t closed by then, the University of Idaho or Phoenix could walk away from their polarizing plan to affiliate.â€
That sounds a little amorphous, and so do, seemingly, conflicting statements by the U of I’s president and its general counsel about deadlines, if any, when bond sales for converting the for-profit U of P must begin to stay on track.
When the deal was announced about a year ago, it was presented as a full-blown agreement between the University of Idaho (and the state board) and the U of P, before anyone else in the state was let in on it. The secrecy was troubling and so was the speed: Phoenix officials said that for various reasons (which never seemed entirely clear to me) the agreement had to be sealed soon. That kind of appeal, to act quick before this opportunity gets away, is one red flag among many littering the landscape.
The agreement contains many details but still seems hard to grasp, smoke-like in its quirky formlessness. I wrote last June, “It’s described as a purchase and also as an ‘affiliation,’ which sounds a little contradictory. Or not. A ‘purchase price’ of $550 million is noted, although the U of P is said to plan a $200 million cash infusion to the new non-profit corporation which actually will own and operate the University of Phoenix, and taxpayers are said not to be underwriting the deal. So the University of Idaho is buying the institution, except that no, a brand new non-profit is.†The non-profit is supposed to be run by a board including a number of Idaho officials, except that it’s not exactly a state board, and what happens if the board members see a conflict between their state responsibilities and those to the nonprofit seems uncertain too.
I thought last year way too many questions remained up in the air, and since then, as many new ones have arisen as have been resolved.
The legislature’s skepticism seems to be hardening. Last week the Idaho House passed a resolution asking the state Board of Education to reconsider approving the Phoenix deal, with the idea at least of slowing it down. The pro-affiliation forces have been meeting with legislators (presumably trying to halt the measure in the Senate).
A new question emerged just days ago, a result of document digging by the Idaho Ed News: “The University of Idaho has outsourced at least $7.3 million of consulting work to President C. Scott Green’s previous employer. Hogan Lovells — an international law firm with 48 offices across the globe — appears to have received most of the money the U of I has shelled out for consulting on its proposed $685 million University of Phoenix purchase, according to documents obtained by Idaho Education News.â€
That story stopped me in my tracks. I’m probably not alone.
The Idaho Legislature could help by setting up an interim committee to shine more light into some of the dark corners of the agreement.
If the Idaho Supreme Court, the attorney general and the Idaho Legislature can apply their brakes - not necessarily to kill the deal but at least to ensure Idahoans have a clear picture of how it is expected to work before the state is committed - a lot of Idahoans probably will be, or should be, grateful.
(image/University of Idaho)