Wednesday, 2 August 2006
Murray State Regent Nominees Sue Fletcher Administration
In a weird move, three nominees who were rejected by Fletcher for Murray State's Board of Regents filed suit against Fletcher. The lawsuit would force Fletcher to appoint one of the to the board. Why do I consider this move strange? Because the law is pretty clear.(emphasis added)
KRS 12.070 Section (3). Where appointments to administrative boards and commissions are made from lists submitted to him, the Governor may reject the list and require that other lists be submitted. Notwithstanding any provision to the contrary, in the event the current membership of a board or commission reflects a proportion of the minority group less than the proportion of the minority group in the total population of the Commonwealth, then the Governor may appoint a member of the minority group even if the list of nominees for a vacancy does not include a member of the minority group.
The law seems pretty straight forward to me. I think this is the definition of a frivolous law suit. But where would they have gotten such a bad idea. Yup you guessed it, the attorney general's office. Assistant AG Rob Jones claimed that Fletcher does not have the power to reject all of the candidates.
"The governor does not have the discretion to send three more names in," Jones said. "A specific statue on a specific board would be controlling over any general law in any area."
I assuming he is referring to KRS 164.005 Section (5a).
The committee shall be responsible for submitting three nominations from which the Governor shall select each gubernatorial appointment....
All that law states is that the Governor must select from the three nominations they present. But the more general law that he can reject any list submitted to him would also hold. Thus Fletcher was well within his rights to reject the entire list and force the committee to send him another list from which he could select. Otherwise you would be striping the Governor of his selection powers to protect the state's interests.
The opinion by Rob Jones seems utterly ridiculous and nothing more than another hit job on the Governor. This incident fits right in line with a continuing pattern of an out of control Attorney General trying to bring down a governor.
