Legislators fast-track bill to fire USC trustees and revamp board following controversy
Legislators are fast-tracking a bill that fires the University of South Carolina's entire board next year, saying a modernization of the unwieldy board is overdue.
COLUMBIA — Legislators are fast-tracking a bill that fires the entire University of South Carolina board next year, saying a modernization of the unwieldy body is long overdue.
The move comes a week after trustees seeking reelection by the General Assembly faced an hourslong grilling over their roles in what critics consider the mismanagement of South Carolina’s largest university.
And it comes days after one of the school’s largest donors said she’d rethink her decision to scrap a $20 million pledge if legislators booted the five questioned incumbents.
The restructuring bill introduced April 5 by House Speaker Jay Lucas would end every trustee’s term in July 2023 and shrink the 20-member board down to 13 with voting authority. That doesn’t necessarily mean every trustee would be replaced. But any incumbent wanting a seat on the revamped board would need to reapply through the legislative screening process.
At the request of House Ways and Means Chairman Murrell Smith, a co-sponsor, the bill was put directly on the House calendar for floor debate this week, giving the proposal a better chance of becoming law before the session ends next month. No one objected to it skipping the committee process.
“It is no secret that the current USC board’s dysfunctionality has been a disaster for far too long,” Lucas said after the unanimous move.
“Last week’s committee meeting only highlighted the urgent need to take immediate action,” added the Hartsville Republican, who sits on the college screening panel. “This legislation provides the solution that our state’s flagship university deserves by putting as much distance as possible between the Statehouse and USC. Reforming the board’s archaic structure will usher in an era of new and necessary leadership.”
The governor would still control two seats but no longer have the option of sitting at the table as chairman himself. Instead, the governor must pick two people to represent him and could participate in meetings but without a vote.
That change follows criticism of Gov. Henry McMaster’s influence in the board’s contentious 2019 selection of Bob Caslen as president. The 11 to 8 heated vote to hire the retired three-star Army general and West Point superintendent drew campus protests and a sanction from accreditors over the governor’s lobbying.
While Caslen received praise for his handling of the COVID crisis, he ended up resigning over his May 2021 speech to graduates that plagiarized a line from another commencement address — a speech that first brought boos from the audience when he accidentally referred to the school as the “University of California.”
The governor is generally supportive of the bill as introduced, but even fast-tracked it’s still a long way from reaching his desk. If it does, whether he’d sign it would depend on what’s in the final version, spokesman Brian Symmes said.
The bipartisan bill would remove the state superintendent of K-12 schools from the board entirely.
The Legislature would elect the other 11 trustees, down from the 16 spots they currently control.
Seven would be picked from each of the state’s congressional districts, while four must live in a county where one of USC’s satellite campuses is located. USC has satellite schools based in Aiken, Allendale, Beaufort, Lancaster, Sumter, Spartanburg and Union counties. No county could have more than one representative.
Currently, the Legislature elects 16 trustees from each of the state’s judicial circuits.
The bill would transform the board from one of the largest into one of the smallest. USC’s 20-member board ties with College of Charleston as the largest among South Carolina public colleges. A board of 13 voting members would tie with South Carolina State University as the smallest.
“The board is too large and needs to be right-sized,” said House Majority Leader Gary Simrill, R-Rock Hill, another co-sponsor. “The congressional districts are wider swaths, and the four additional seats are in the fabric of the university.”
The president of the school’s alumni association would keep a seat but would no longer have a vote. The student body president would also become a non-voting member.
The effort marks the third try in four years to reboot the board.
Similar bills were introduced in both the House and Senate in 2019 in protest of that tumultuous presidential search. But those bills stalled as anger subsided, and in March 2020, the pandemic cut the legislative session short anyway, officially ending their chances. During a special session that fall, legislators reelected six of the seven incumbents seeking another term.
The plagiarism scandal brought more proposals, with a Senate bill filed the day Caslen resigned last May, and a House bill introduced the next day. But those bills had yet to receive a hearing before another round of trustee elections rekindled legislators’ outrage over a string of controversies, including not only Caslen’s bumpy tenure but the search for his replacement, spats with major donors, and multimillion-dollar buyouts of two fired coaches.
A five-hour interrogation March 28 ended with a legislative panel advancing just one of six incumbents to the General Assembly for possible reelection. The joint House-Senate screening commission delayed voting on the other five, including Chairman Dorn Smith, who was questioned about what donor Lou Kennedy called his dismissive attitude of her opinion on finalists to replace Caslen.
Kennedy, the chief executive of West Columbia-based Nephron Pharmaceuticals, quit the presidential search panel last year and vowed to halt future pledges to her alma mater, including one worth $20 million. She said last week she’d reconsider that if there’s a major shakeup in the board.
Legislative elections for eight USC seats are supposed to occur May 4 for terms starting July 1 and continuing through June 2026.
While the bill doesn’t address those elections, it would cut those terms short.
The legislative screening panel has not set a new meeting to consider the fate of the five USC trustees whose reelection bids were put on hold.
Lucas’ bill is nearly guaranteed to pass the House, but its chances in the Senate are unclear. An identical bill sponsored by GOP Sen. Tom Young of Aiken is expected to be filed in that chamber April 6 with more than a dozen co-sponsors.
Those not keen on the idea include Sen. Kevin Johnson, D-Manning, who said he’d support shrinking a board he agrees is too large but not booting everyone at once.
“Some on the board I’d hate to have to go through that,” he said. “If we fire the entire board, that would be tantamount with the good suffering with the bad.”
