BATON ROUGE (AP) -- LSU's governing board remains split on who should be next in line for leadership and delayed a vote Thursday on the matter rather than reach another stalemate.
The 16-member Board of Supervisors is deadlocked about who should serve as its chairman-elect: telecommunications executive Alvin Kimble or Shreveport doctor John George. Kimble claims he had 14 votes in his favor before Gov. Bobby Jindal backed George.
Board Chairman Jim Roy of Lafayette started his leadership job in August, at the same meeting in which members couldn't choose his eventual successor. Roy supports Kimble while the Jindal administration supports George.
Both George and Kimble are appointees of former Gov. Kathleen Blanco.
An LSU System spokesman said the board will vote on the chairman-elect at its next meeting, in December after deferring the matter without discussion Thursday.
"The vote's still 8-8," said spokesman Charles Zewe.
Kimble said he believes Jindal is concerned with the LSU board mostly because of its role in health care policy. There has been friction between the administration and LSU over a proposed teaching hospital in New Orleans, with unsettled questions over the financing, scope and governance of the billion-dollar project.
Kimble said Jindal shouldn't be involved in the selection of a chairman-elect. He told The Times-Picayune newspaper that governors should appoint able members and leave them to perform their duties.
"It's just not good for the board for half the members to demonstrate that they are willing" to be led by the governor, he said.
Timmy Teepell, Jindal's chief of staff, confirmed in August that he had made calls on Jindal's behalf, but he denied pressuring board members.
He defended the governor expressing an opinion on the chairmanship of the board that oversees LSU's flagship university in Baton Rouge, four other academic campuses, two medical schools, a law school, an agriculture center and the state's charity hospital system.
Comments
Post a comment
(Requires free registration.)