EDITORIAL: Once again, trustees fall through floor

You might think you’d have to look long and hard to find an attorney less equipped to competently advise North Idaho College’s board of trustees than Art Macomber.

But behold! The trustee majority, Greg McKenzie, Todd Banducci and Mike Waggoner, just might have found one in their backyard.

That would be D. Colton Boyles of Sandpoint, Idaho.

Boyles, whom Trustee Brad Corkill accurately described as having zero relevant experience — “None. None at all,” Corkill said — was tempting enough to block approval of an A+ candidate during the trustees’ meeting Wednesday night.

While Macomber’s reign has been as short as it’s been disastrous — he’s hanging on until somebody takes over, presumably within the next two months — Boyles astonishingly might be a step down. His LinkedIn page is empty. His one-man law firm website lists areas of the law he says he’ll work, but has as much in-depth information as Homer Simpson’s head has hair.

On the other end of the scale among the four applicants who sought the job is a Spokane law firm called Stevens Clay.

With a dozen experienced lawyers, Stevens Clay is the region's foremost legal firm focused on education. Its client list includes about 100 school districts, Eastern Washington University, Bend Community College and the Spokane community colleges.

An NIC staff group researched all four applicants and developed a matrix, with the higher number — up to 100 — representing the best, and 0 representing the worst. Guess what? Stevens Clay scored 100. D. Colton Boyles? 0.

Yet in the modern math of trustees Waggoner, McKenzie and Banducci, zero is of course greater than 100. Or at least, close enough that the blatantly obvious best choice should be shoved into a waiting room until further notice.

Want another kicker? Stevens Clay, with its broad and deep litigation and general counsel experience representing educational institutions, charges $50 an hour less than Macomber. If offers multiples of quality representation greater than Macomber's for a smaller hourly fee.

The accrediting agency that has NIC on high alert, primarily because of trustee intransigence and incompetence, was watching Wednesday’s board meeting with special scrutiny. Time is nearly up for the college to show why it deserves a stay of accreditation execution, and Wednesday’s trustee performance on replacing bad legal counsel with good legal counsel was an enormous opportunity missed.

No, it was worse than that. It was yet another example of a board majority stubbornly finding ways to lower the floor when what’s needed is all-out effort to join trustees Corkill and Tarie Zimmerman and raise the ceiling.

Instead, the roof is caving in.