Letter to the Governor of Virginia
The Executive Council approved the letter to Governor McAuliffe in December 2014.
29 December 2014
Dear Governor McAuliffe:
The Modern Language Association wishes to comment on the executive order of 14 November 2014 (https://governor.virginia.gov/media/3430/eo-33-designation-of-executive-branch-officers-and-employees-required-to-file-financial-disclosure-statements.pdf) that requires certain faculty members at public universities in Virginia to make public extremely detailed statements of economic interest, both individual and familial. State employees who participate in activities such as procurement, auditing, and investment should certainly disclose potential conflicts of interest. It seems excessive, however, to impose the same financial disclosure requirements on university employees who chair academic departments or direct programs. Faculty members in these positions control small budgets with little discretionary spending, oversee a very limited amount of procurement, and are already bound by strict university-wide rules about vendor choice. They have little discretion over decisions that could lead to the practices the new requirements are designed to prevent.
The Commonwealth of Virginia is to be credited with instituting an important tool to prevent corrupt influence by employees with independent budgetary and policy-making authority. Academic chairs and directors, however, do not fall into that category. The new requirements are sufficiently intrusive that their main impact will be to discourage faculty members from serving in administrative capacities, thus paradoxically decreasing the quality of university governance. Moreover, in academic institutions across the United States, faculty members are already required to disclose conflicts of interest to the universities that employ them.
The MLA is not in any way questioning the principle of disclosure, but we believe that there is no compelling reason to extend the disclosure requirements to include members of a group whose financial authority is wholly constrained by university- or college-wide rules. We respectfully submit that the extension of this intrusive disclosure requirement to these faculty members imposes an unnecessary burden on them and forces them to expose their private lives to public view.
We join our colleagues in the American Historical Association in urging you to use your executive authority to reconsider the extension of detailed financial disclosure to a group to which your policy cannot reasonably be said to apply. We thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Margaret W. Ferguson, MLA President