Will Mike Parson go the partisan route and make UMKC an educational stepchild again?
The stepchild status of Kansas City’s state university may soon be on full display again.
We told you last year about the unseemly rush to give University of Missouri System President Dr. Mun Choi a second job as chancellor of the Columbia campus. The decision effectively made Choi his own boss.
The other three campuses in the system — The University of Missouri-Kansas City, the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and Missouri University S&T in Rolla — were dispatched to the back of the bus, second among equals. The message from the nine-member Board of Curators was simple and unmistakable.
Four of those curators have now reached the end of their terms. That gives Gov. Mike Parson a chance to bring a new perspective to a board that has too often ignored the concerns of three of its institutions, including UMKC.
Kansas City interests are pushing a well-qualified attorney named Lisa Weixelman for the 6th District vacancy. Weixelman is on UMKC’s Board of Trustees, and went to law school there.
She has no chance, one insider said last week.
Instead, the clubhouse leader is Todd Graves, the former U.S. attorney, former chairman of the Missouri Republican Party and brother to U.S. Rep. Sam Graves, a Republican from Tarkio.
Todd Graves did not go to UMKC. He wouldn’t comment on the record last week, but he is known to be interested in the appointment, which lasts six years.
Graves’ lack of a real connection to UMKC is problematic enough. But there are other reasons to be deeply worried about his appointment to a board responsible for a $3 billion budget and more than 71,000 students.
The Board of Curators should be apolitical. Yet Graves is intensely partisan — as GOP chairman, he was a loud apologist for bully-boy Eric Greitens, the disgraced former governor. In 2017, Graves fiercely opposed an investigation into a GOP state senator accused of a conflict of interest.
Lawyers in his firm defended gerrymandering in North Carolina. A fellow attorney there is president of the Kansas City lawyers’ chapter of the Federalist Society, a hyper-conservative advocacy group. Graves’ law partner, Nathan Garrett, is the most conservative and controversial member of Kansas City’s dysfunctional police board.
More? In December, Graves was appointed chairman of the Stanley Herzog Foundation, formed to “support the advancement and acceleration of non-denominational Christian education through a several-hundred-million-dollar endowment,” according to its website.
“The foundation’s primary focus will be K-12, with an eye toward continuing education in colleges and trade schools,” the website says. “Initiatives will include fully operational schools, home schooling, curriculum development, learning pods and more.”
Does Kansas City want or need a curator with this background overseeing UMKC? The answer seems obvious.
There are other reported contenders for the spot, including Blake Hurst, retired president of the Missouri Farm Bureau. None appears to have a firm understanding of the problems facing UMKC or urban post-secondary education.
The curators’ 5th District member, Michael Williams, generally gets high marks for representing Kansas City interests. Yet even Williams voted to give Mun Choi the system presidency and the chancellor’s job despite a furious push against the move locally.
Williams didn’t go to UMKC either.
When Mike Parson first became governor, he made high-profile trips to Kansas City and St. Louis. The message was clear: Parson would pay attention to urban concerns, unlike other recent governors.
Since then, Parson has bungled the response to crime in Kansas City and St. Louis and fumbled vaccine distribution in the cities. He doesn’t come here much. Parson’s commitment to the state’s two biggest cities seems tenuous at best.
Here’s a chance to prove me wrong. The next curator from our area should be a nonpartisan problem solver intricately familiar with UMKC and the other non-Columbia campuses. Gender diversity would be good too. Lisa Weixelman sounds about right.
Any other result further emphasizes UMKC’s stepchild status, and pokes a finger in the eye of every Kansas Citian.
