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By DAVID SKOLNICK
For The Intelligencer
YOUNGSTOWN -- If both sides come to an agreement, the Youngstown State University Board of Trustees will vote today on a contract to hire U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson as the university's next president -- a move that has drawn objections and criticism from employees, alumni and students.
"We are still negotiating and if both parties agree on terms then we will have a contract that will need to be voted on by the board (today)," Becky Rose, YSU spokeswoman, said Monday.
Neither YSU nor Johnson will confirm a deal is done.
But the board of trustees announced a news conference following today's special 2 p.m. meeting "to discuss the presidential search process and the current status of the search," according to a Monday media advisory from Rose.
Today's special meeting agenda lists "presidential search" under unfinished business.
The board voted 8-1 in favor of offering the president's job to Johnson, R-Marietta, at an emergency meeting Thursday in a stunning move. The board had announced the meeting only two hours prior and has failed to disclose why it considered the offer to Johnson an emergency when plans have been to have a president in place by mid-2024.
A group of five alumni -- including Ashley Orr, YSU's only Rhodes Scholar -- wrote a letter Saturday demanding the board rescind the offer, objecting to the board's refusal to "incorporate the greater YSU community in its decision making."
It also states "Johnson's positions are highly contentious and directly relevant to the diverse interests and identities of YSU's student body." The letter objects to Johnson's opposition to gay marriage, his support of former President Donald Trump's "ban of travel from majority Muslim countries and, without evidence, questioned the validity of the 2020 presidential election. These issues cast doubt on his ability to lead YSU's diverse student body."
Only two days after the letter was written, the group collected about 2,300 signatures with 80% of them alumni, including those representing every academic class between 1962 and this year.
A petition on change.org in opposition to hiring Johnson received more than 1,750 signatures as of Monday with objections to selecting the congressman because he doesn't have any higher education experience, the trustees didn't give the faculty or the community a say in the selection process, and because Johnson is anti-choice and an "election denier."
Johnson, 69, is in his seventh two-year term in the U.S. House and has supported fellow Republican Trump in 2016, 2020 and has already endorsed him for the 2024 presidential election.
A day before the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, Johnson said he would vote against counting all of the electoral votes, specifically Pennsylvania, won by President Joe Biden, a Democrat, claiming the "election wasn't fair."
Johnson, whose district includes Belmont, Harrison, Jefferson and Monroe counties, also said at the time, "Simply rubber-stamping these slipshod and partisan-laced electoral outcomes is wrong."
LACK OF TRANSPARENCY
Unlike previous YSU presidential searches, the candidates and finalists for this never were announced publicly nor brought to the university for interviews and forums with campus groups.
The YSU-Ohio Education Association faculty union immediately protested the selection of Johnson and the lack of transparency.
The board's presidential search guidance committee worked with the executive search firm of Witt/Keiffer.
The search has been underway since May after Jim Tressel, the previous president for close to nine years, retired in February.
Three finalists were interviewed privately from about a dozen applicants, Michael Peterson, chairman of the YSU trustees, said after Thursday's vote.
YSU denied a request Monday from The Vindicator for the applicants' resumes, with Rose saying "the university does not have records responsive to this request."
Rose cited a 2003 Ohio Supreme Court decision in which The Cincinnati Enquirer sued that city's board of education to get resumes, correspondence and other documents related to a school superintendent search. The school used an outside firm for the selection process. All documentation was reviewed by school board members in executive session and then returned to the applicants except one who agreed to leave it with the board.
REMOTE VOTE LEGAL
Of the YSU board of trustees' nine members, only four were physically present at Tod Hall for the emergency meeting. The other five attended and voted remotely from various locations in Ohio and Florida.
Most public bodies are required to have its members attend in person to vote.
But a provision put into the 2021 state budget bill permits the boards of trustees at public universities to have remote voting and attendance as long as it adopts a specific policy, which YSU did on Sept. 21, 2022.
QUALIFICATIONS
Johnson has never worked in higher education and was approached to seek the job.
Johnson has a master's degree in computer science from Georgia Tech in 1984 and a bachelor of science degree, also in computer science, from Troy University in Alabama in 1979.
After 26 years in the U.S. Air Force, retiring in 1999 as a lieutenant colonel, Johnson owned a couple of information technology consulting firms and served from 2006 to 2010 as chief information officer for Stoneridge Inc., which brought him to Ohio. He was first elected to Congress in November 2010.
CAMPAIGN
CONTRIBUTIONS
Some of the YSU trustees are corporate executives at businesses that are among the largest donors to Johnson's political campaigns. Trustee Richard C. Fryda, president and CEO of Compco Industries, has given $19,000 to Johnson's campaigns since 2013, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Trustee Joseph J. Kerola, president of PI&I Motor Express, gave the $6,400 maximum individual contribution in the 2022 campaign to Johnson, according to FEC reports. Overall, Kerola has given $22,200 to Johnson's campaigns since 2014.
Trustee Charles T. George, CEO of Hapco Inc., gave $5,800 to Johnson's campaign in the last election cycle, according to FEC reports. George has contributed a total of $21,700 to Johnson's campaigns since 2014, according to FEC reports.