Board of Supervisors Chairman Hank Danos said in a statement Friday he is confident Judge Janice Clark’s ruling that the Board must “immediately produce” the names of the people considered for the University presidency will be overturned following the Board’s appeal.
Clark ordered the Board to produce the names of more than 30 candidates considered by the Presidential Search Committee shortly after the NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune and The Advocate’s first hearing Thursday.
“LSU is disappointed in the ruling but confident the decision will be reversed on appeal,” Danos said in the statement. “The ruling orders LSU to do something that is not possible — to produce records not in LSU’s custody or control.”
Danos insisted the Board conducted the presidential search “in accordance with a 2006 statute that requires public disclosure when a candidate becomes an actual ‘applicant.’”
“In addition, some press reports that the judge ruled the search was conducted illegally are flatly wrong,” Danos said in the statement. “The judge ruled that certain information must be disclosed, not that the search was conducted illegally.”
The Daily Reveille Editor in Chief Andrea Gallo, who also filed suit against the University, said Clark’s ruling strengthens her case, which will be heard Tuesday by Judge Timothy Kelley.
“What happened Thursday with The Times-Picayune and The Advocate winning their case makes [my lawyer’s] and my argument more legitimate,” Gallo said. “We’re not the only ones that had in mind that what LSU was doing violated open records law.”
Gallo said the Thursday hearing focused largely on the interpretation of the word “applicant,” while Jimmy Faircloth, who represented LSU, said newly elected University President F. King Alexander was the only official applicant identified.
Presidential Search Committee Chairman and Board member Blake Chatelain said the search process began with a list of about 100 potential candidates that was eventually narrowed down to six or seven by committee members, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune reported.
Faircloth will likely take a different approach Tuesday than he did at the Thursday hearing, probably calling upon witnesses rather than deposition testimony like he did Thursday, Gallo said.
Gallo’s lawyer Scott Sternberg said he expects Chatelain and Bill Funk, R. William Funk and Associates president and founder, to be witnesses for Tuesday’s hearing.
