City Club panel examines the secrets of well-running governing boards

Lane County has dozens of elected governing boards, filled with mostly unpaid citizens who oversee cities and towns, school districts, fire and ambulance departments, soil and conservation districts — the list goes on. 

Typically, members of these boards start their work with little or no training. They have just one employee who reports to them — the head of the entity they govern. They meet for hours on end in sometimes cramped and often poorly ventilated rooms with indifferent lighting. Usually, their meetings attract little notice and few visitors — unless a hot issue erupts. And if it does, they sit through hours of often-enraged comment from members of the public. 

Still, these boards are charged with making real decisions that have a real impact on the lives of people throughout the county. And boards that are working well usually share the same attributes, according to speakers at the City Club of Eugene’s meeting Friday, Feb. 27.

“The first thing that a public board — and also the public, honestly — really needs to understand is that governance is not management,” Emielle Nischik, the executive director of the Oregon School Boards Association, said at the meeting. The association works with more than 200 school districts and related organizations.

Governance, she told the 50 or so people attending Friday’s meeting, involves “looking at the long-term strategic focus of the organization and really doing that through setting the strategic plan, the vision and the policies.”

It can be easy for a board to blur the line between governance and management, Nischik said, and that can lead to trouble — on both sides of the line.

If board members delve too deeply into management, she said, “they often wind up micromanaging. Or, on the opposite side of that, they wind up rubber-stamping.”

Either way can lead to chaos for an organization, she said. 

‘Respectful’ disagreement

Members also need to remember that the board governs as a single body — and not as a group of individuals, she said.

“Individual board members have influence, and they certainly come to the board — especially when they’re running for a position — with their own interests,” she said. But she added that boards “only have the authority to act as a collective.”

“Oftentimes, new members think of themselves as individual legislators, and we’re seeing more and more of this throughout the state, throughout all public bodies. We’re seeing it with school boards. We’re seeing it with local city councils. It’s really an issue that is impacting all public bodies.”

That’s where board policies are crucial, she said, in offering “guardrails” that outline what’s within its purview — and, as tempting as it may be for new board members to change those policies, many of them are mandated by statute.

None of this means that board members can’t air disagreements.

Well-functioning boards “understand that respectful — respectful — spirited discussion and disagreement is OK,” Nischik said. “And it’s often really healthy, because it shows multiple sides of an issue.”

But those boards also “practice unified governance, meaning that everyone supports the decision once the vote is made,” she said.

Randy Groves, a Eugene city councilor who spoke at the City Club meeting, drew on his experience on the council and with Eugene Springfield Fire to highlight Nischik’s point about unified governance.

“I may not agree with the direction, but once I’ve had my day in court in front of the council, and if I don’t get my way, I don’t have the right to go out and sabotage that,” he said. “I need to do everything I can to make it successful.”

Nischik also emphasized the importance of a strong relationship between the board and the organization’s director — typically, the board’s only employee. It’s a relationship that requires “open, honest communication,” she said. It’s also vital that it’s the entire board governing the executive, “so no one individual board member can give direction to that executive.”

Well-functioning boards also learn how not to get sidetracked by conflict, she said.

“Research very clearly shows that if a board is having conflict, it directly impacts the morale and the ability of the team to function and meet the goals of the organization and serve its constituency,” she said.

“If you are spending most of your time talking about the board, you are not in the right place.”

John H. Brown, who has served as a commissioner on the Eugene Water & Electric Board of directors since 2007, also participated on the panel.