New bill seeks change to college leadership

COEUR d’ALENE — The House State Affairs Committee voted on Wednesday to print a bill which would require community colleges to establish trustee districts similar to how school districts elect board members.

Mark Browning, North Idaho College’s vice president for communications and governmental relations, said he is aware of House bill 387, but the college has not taken a position on it yet.

According to intent language attached to the bill by its 16 co-sponsors, including Rep. Don Cheatham, R-Post Falls: “Different communities have different technical, academic, and professional development needs; our community college system should reflect this diversity. To that end, the purpose of this legislation is to ensure representation that is distributed evenly throughout a community college district.”

It goes on to say: “The bill utilizes the same processes for zoning and rezoning within the district that Idaho Code already requires of school districts.”

Browning said he was in the House State Affairs Committee when the bill was introduced for a print hearing.

“This is coming out of the Caldwell area,” he said on Friday, while explaining some of the elements in the bill.

The bill would require the college to create five zones that are roughly equal in population to each other and one trustee would be elected from each zone.

“Trustees must reside in the zone, but they still will be elected by everyone in the district,” Browning said, adding the bill has a lot of potential implications.

Initially when the colleges rezone their districts, if there are two or more incumbent trustees in one of the newly created zones, the trustee with the highest seniority on the board would remain seated and the other two would be eliminated. The two new trustees would be appointed in the unrepresented zones.

Browning said it will be an interesting dilemma for the College of Southern Idaho, which has three trustees living within a half-block of one another.

“Also what happens if someone doesn’t step up to run in one of the zones?” he wondered. “Do we appoint someone from that zone? And if so, who appoints them?”

Browning said he has not had time to thoroughly examine the five-page bill, but from what he has seen there will be many questions.

“We will be keeping an eye on this,” he said, adding NIC’s Board of Trustees will be examining the bill as well.

Browning said legislators have attempted to pass similar legislation in the past, but so far those attempts have failed for different reasons.

The last attempt was in 2012. Browning said the late Rep. Frank Henderson was pursuing a similar bill, but then decided not to follow through with it.

Browning said lawmakers fielded a lot of questions about the bill during the print hearing, but there was no outspoken opposition to the legislation at this point.

“There was really no resistance to printing the bill for a hearing,” he said.