The Iowa Senate has confirmed all four of the people Governor Chet Culver appointed to the board that governs Iowa, Iowa State and UNI.
Republicans in the Iowa Senate had complained all of the nominees to the Board of Regents were from central or eastern Iowa, and Senate GOP Leader Mary Lundby of Marion says the Democratic governor offered an olive branch. "We have in our possession…a letter from the governor, confirming that the next appointment to the Board of Regents will be from western Iowa," Lundby says.
Culver’s next opportunity to name a western Iowan to the nine-member panel will come in 2009, unless a current board member resigns before their term is over. "The letter says ‘the next appointment shall be from western Iowa,’" Lundby told reporters.
Lundby says all four of Culver’s current nominees were qualified and the senate quickly moved to confirm them all Thursday afternoon.
"I think it’s an appropriate resolution to the concerns about the Board of Regents," Senate Democratic Leader Mike Gronstal says of the governor’s pledge to name a western Iowa to the Board of Regents.
Former Iowa Attorney General Bonnie Campbell, Iowa Farm Bureau president Craig Lang and two Iowa businessmen all were confirmed to the Board of Regents Thursday afternoon. Campbell’s appointment initially had been endorsed on Wednesday night, but a Republican senator’s move to table it put her nomination in limbo until the senate’s final action Thursday afternoon.