Union continues attacks on LCC president at marathon board meeting 

Members of the union representing faculty members at Lane Community College sharply criticized LCC administrators, including President Stephanie Bulger, at a marathon meeting of LCC’s Board of Education Wednesday, Nov. 5 — but other speakers defended Bulger and had pointed words for the board itself.

The meeting, which lasted four hours and 55 minutes, included 63 public comments, another presentation on best board practices from a national organization, a cloudy financial forecast and a terse comment from board Chair Austin Fölnagy about allegations from the faculty union that Bulger had convened meetings with board members in violation of Oregon’s public meetings law.

But because none of the sessions in question between Bulger and the board involved a quorum of board members, they’re not officially considered meetings under the law. And the legal responsibility for ensuring meetings are open rests with the board, not Bulger.

Fölnagy said the statement responding to the allegations had been agreed upon by the entire board and had been crafted through discussions between himself and legal counsel.

He read: “The board is issuing this statement to provide clear clarification regarding the meetings conducted by Dr. Bulger in August concerning the implementation of the (2025-26) budget approved in June. As Dr. Bulger is an administrator and not a member of the college governing body, she’s not legally subject to Oregon open-meeting statutes. It is not legally possible for her to violate Oregon open-meeting laws.”

The accusations first surfaced in an Oct. 20 press release from the Lane Community College Education Association, the faculty union. Fölnagy’s statement Wednesday was greeted by the audience, at the time about 150 strong, with a ripple of laughter.

Public comment

Despite Fölnagy’s statement, many of the comments criticizing Bulger cited the open-meeting allegations, along with continued concerns surrounding negotiations over a new contract and  charges that LCC’s administration is undermining the board’s role in governing the college.

The Lane Community College Education Association and the Lane Community College Employee Federation, which represents classified workers, have been working without contracts since June 30. 

Union members and supporters, who had rallied earlier Wednesday and marched in the rain to the meeting, ripped into the college’s contract proposal. 

“This is the worst adversarial bargaining I’ve seen in 40 years,” said Margaret Bayless, a retired English instructor at LCC. “The elected board’s integrity is at stake when you fail to instruct the college president, your sole employee, to reach a fair contract with the faculty union.”

Union officials have said the administration’s proposals would increase class sizes and faculty workloads, cut part-time faculty jobs and reduce benefits, among other issues. 

“We may very well become the first community college faculty in Oregon to go on strike,” said faculty member Jay Frasier. “I doubt that that is the legacy this board wants to leave, but the administration may leave us with no other reasonable choice.”

Daphne Gabrieli, another faculty member, urged a faster pace of negotiations: “A recurring theme of my dreams at night is running, impossibly slowly, unable to outrun what’s behind me, because I am in slow motion. And that’s what it feels like in real life when I observe bargaining. Please help us expedite the bargaining process.”

LCC administrators did not immediately respond Thursday to a request for comments about the bargaining. 

The union also has charged that Bulger is usurping responsibilities that belong to the board. For example, it says a decision this year o suspend the college’s licensed practical nurse program should have been approved by the board. More recently, the college canceled about 100 course sections; Colm Joyce, the college’s vice president for student affairs, said it’s “working on a warm handoff” for affected students.  

The union says previous boards routinely have voted on decisions to launch or terminate programs and has lamented what it calls a “crisis of democracy” at LCC. It has launched a petition campaign calling on the board to “reaffirm its role as the governing body of Lane Community College and its critical role in our democracy in representing the people of Lane County.”

Some of the speakers at the meeting read statements calling for Bulger’s resignation or asking the board to terminate her contract. 

Bulger’s backers speak up 

Bulger had defenders at the meeting. 

Mary Spilde, a former LCC president, said she was “puzzled” by the allegations that Bulger had violated open-meeting law: “While I was president for 16 years, I met almost every month with board members outside of board meetings,” she said. “It was no secret.” The goal of those meetings, she said, was to “share information, educate and ensure that board members have everything they need to make informed decisions.”

Brittany Quick-Warner, the CEO and president of the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce, said boards “don’t run day-to-day operations or intervene in management decisions. Instead, they empower the president to lead effectively and to keep their focus on long-term strategy and student success.”

Demond Hawkins, speaking on behalf of the Eugene-Springfield chapter of the NAACP, praised Bulger: “What we’ve seen out of her is a Black woman whose leadership is strengthening this college through transparency, accountability and results. … Too often, women who bring change and demand accountability become targets of resistance, and … we’re starting to see a pattern of that here at LCC.” 

Governance issues

The question of the proper role for the board in governing LCC continues to divide the seven-member elected volunteer board.

Wednesday night, the board sat through another presentation about governance, this one from Selena M. Grace, the president of the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, the organization that accredits LCC and other community colleges. It’s at least the third time this year the board has watched a presentation about governance.

“Your ability to function effectively as a board is really critically important to the sustainability and viability of your institution,” Grace said. “When an institution finds itself in trouble, it’s because you’re not adhering to your own processes and procedures.”

Grace added: “You set the goals and objectives and you evaluate the president’s progress on meeting those goals and objectives, but it is the president’s responsibility and her team’s to determine how that gets done.”

Later in her presentation, she said: “I’ve seen it time and time again that if the board has lost confidence in the president, or if there’s not a good, strong working relationship, then you’re not going to move forward.”

State could cut financial support 

Near the end of the meeting, Kara Flath, LCC’s vice president for finance and operations, updated the board on fiscal projections. She said the estimate for the current fiscal year shows LCC to be running about $500,000 over budget, but should be able to get to a break-even point by the end of the year. But that, she said, won’t allow for any progress in reaching the board’s goal of returning LCC’s ending-fund balance (essentially its reserves) to 10% of its general fund.

More ominous, the state Higher Education Coordinating Commission has indicated that state support for LCC could drop by 7.4% as Oregon’s fiscal condition worsens. The impact, LCC officials say, could amount to $2.5 million annually.

Flath said LCC administrators were working on “budget parameters” for the next fiscal year and planned to present those to the board at its December meeting.

And finally

At the end of the public comment period, which lasted more than two hours, board members saw a familiar face: Eric Kim, an instructor at the college who, by tradition, always goes last in the public comment period and who offers commentary that may or may not pertain to any of the topics on the agenda. 

On Wednesday night, Kim talked about misinformation and how it can spread, and he ended with these words: “Cynicism is not critical thinking and can lead to distrust. Distrust is not good for a civil society that requires cooperation. Thank you.”