The Board of Regents has inadvertently fueled the fire of governance reform in higher education.

The Regents contracted an independent group, the Bronner Group Inc., to the tune of $41,000, to do a study of the Board’s efficiency.

However, the Regents have now done a very unwise and inefficient thing. Instead of requesting a written report, the Regents only were given an oral preliminary brief on the group’s finding. Then, instead of having the group finish its report in writing, the Regents simply never asked for the Bronner Group’s final report.

A Bronner’s Group spokesperson was quoted as saying the group expected to be asked to file a final report, especially since the group spent 300 work hours at $100 working on it.

The Regents have decided the Bronner Group Inc. was not doing an adequate job and that the report didn’t have to be finished because of changing circumstances in higher education and within the board itself (eight of the 14 board members have changed in the last year).

In other words, the report was, according to the Regents, a $41,000 waste of the taxpayers money. Perhaps $41,000 is not a big deal to Regents Chancellor Roderick Groves who earns in excess of $100,000. But the fact is that most of the taxpayers who pay Groves’ salary make less in a year than the $41,000 wasted on a report that now doesn’t even exist.

One must ask why the Regents didn’t ask for a finished product. Even if the board thought the Bronner Group was doing a poor job, it still should have asked for a finished product to at least show how the money was spent.

If the report was that poor the board could have complained and made a big stink. There really isn’t a good reason for the report never coming into being.

Here’s a thought. Perhaps the report contained information which made the Regents look inefficient. Maybe the report found more $41,000 snafus and the Regents didn’t appreciate it. The public can only speculate as to what the report contained.

It’s ironic to imagine the Regents blowing $41,000 to investigate government inefficiency.

We don’t even need to do much investigating to determine that the Regent’s were definitely inefficient in this situation. Maybe Rod Groves could send the Star $41,000.