This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Much is said every election year about the importance of citizens becoming informed and voting. But when it comes to the Utah State Board of Education, none of that matters, because citizens are left out of most of the process.
People who pushed for the current system, in which a committee chooses three candidates whose names are sent to the governor for winnowing to a slate of two candidates for each open seat, gave various nonsensical reasons for virtually eliminating voters. Some said voters don't know enough about the candidates to choose qualified board members. Some said there weren't enough people interested in running.
Well, a record 59 people have filed for nine open seats this year. So much for the second argument. As for the first, since when have voters needed to explain their qualifications before choosing those who will represent them in any elected office?
The real reason for a governor-appointed nominating committee is that some powerful people in the Legislature (read Republican) want their political party to decide who sits on the state education board. That is because, if left to voters, who often do not agree with the Legislature on public education issues, the makeup of the board might lean more toward supporting public education and less toward privatizing education, as most Republicans want.
In theory, the committee is supposed to be able to choose better-qualified candidates than voters would for the board that makes policy decisions about public education in the Beehive State. But in fact, the governor naturally appoints members to the committee who follow his and the Legislature's Republican bent on education.
That's why the current committee, heavily weighted toward business, the Republican right and "school choice" proponents, decided this week against forwarding all incumbent board members' names to the governor among the three selected for each seat.
Doing otherwise would have given voters more authority over who represents them than the committee wanted to allow. Indeed, in recent years the committee has decided for voters that four of the people they elected should not be returned to office, including the state school board chairman and several who had been elected by hefty margins.
This is a sham. Only the voters who put a representative into office should have the right of removal. No committee of elected officials should be able to abrogate this right of citizens to choose.