Transcript
Index
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Hellard: [microphone noise, inaudible] I don’t know, this—this interview—I mean
this speaker’s race is—we did agree I could tape on that. We can just talk about it for a minute if you want to.: Uh-huh.
Hellard:Right now I think Blandford actually has the votes, but I just don’t
know, you know, Bobby’s no dummy when it comes to politics and getting things done.:No, he’s a pretty—Bobby’s a pretty adroit maneuverer.
Hellard:But, you know, there’s not reason for a sitting speaker, I think, ever
to be in any kind of difficulty—it’s kinds of like being country clerk.:It ought to be. I—I have very seldom known a speaker—the last speaker I can
recall that had much of a problem was Shelby McCallum, who really wasn’t a very strong speaker, and only served one session, didn’t he?Hellard:Yes, I think that’s right.
Prichard:And he really served only because Ned Breathitt—in those days the
governor had a major impact on the choice of leadership and Ned was so close to Shelby, they were actually partners in business you know, owned a radio station together down in Fort Campbell—and Shelby was a very weak speaker and they dropped him after one session. And I guess Bloom was the last one after that that— Bloom did serve after he was speaker, didn’t he?Hellard:Yes he did. Yes he did. Julian [Carroll) dropped him.
:That’s right.
Hellard:Julian picked up Kenton.
:That’s right.
Hellard:Of course this is really the first time we’ve had a legitimate
race—leadership race—:That’s right.
Hellard:—since the governor got on because even though Blandford ran again—ran
against Kenton in ’70, what, ’79—:Yes.
Hellard:—that really wasn’t a race, Kenton had it sewed up from the very beginning.
:Why, I thought Kenton never was in any danger.
Hellard:Then Bobby had Mark Ferrell run against him two years ago at the last
minute and got twenty-two votes, which would indicate there’s some base out there for Blandford to build on.:Wasn’t that sort of a Lloyd Clamp deal?
Hellard:Well, I think Lloyd put him into it, yeah.
:What Lloyd ran for floor leader, didn’t he? Or something.
Hellard:Speaker pro tem.
:Speaker pro tem, yeah, and—
Hellard:Blandford beat him.
:Well, the very fact that Bobby lost twenty-two votes indicated that there’s at
least a hard core—Hellard:Of discontented people.
:—of discontent. Because ordinarily you don’t expect a speaker to have much
opposition. I don’t know why—I have—now Bobby never said this to me, at least I don’t think he did, but I heard somewh—heard him quoted as saying that he didn’t really feel so sad if he wasn’t going to be speaker again that he thought he’d be more effective on the floor than he would be in the chair. And that he would enjoy being back where he could take a more prominent role on the floor. Now, that may be just making the best of a bad situation. But have you ever heard anything like that, that he’s ever said anything like that?Hellard:Oh yes, oh hes, yes he has. But—
:He may have said it to me.
Hellard:But I—I will guarantee you this, that Bobby—
:He doesn’t mean it.
Hellard:No [ laughs], no—once the challenge has been made, Bobby—Bobby’s
personality is not capable of not accepting the challenge. And he may enjoy being back on the floor once he is put there, but he won’t be enjoy—he won’t enjoy the process of being put there. He may have been trying to make the best thing out of a bad situation.:I’ll say this, if I were speaker and Bobby back on the floor I would have some
apprehensions as to whether my leadership as speaker wouldn’t rest on a tenuous foundation part of the time.Hellard:Well, of course that’s similar to the Kenton situation with Bloom on the
floor. He was quite concerned about that, but Bloom, you know over accommodated himself.:Bloom basically goes with the power. I don’t think Bloom likes to be, you know,
he had his stint as a kind of a rebel, way back, and he quickly accommodated himself to the power structure. And I don’t think he’s ever—he’s been in opposition anymore, or was. Of course, now he doesn’t really count for much. Truth is there are a lot of the members now that Bloom doesn’t even know.Hellard:Well, that’s true. Well, it’s going to be interesting. I—I’m glad we
have a year’s time between the time they’re selected and the time we have a session because I think that’ll be a good cooling off period, regardless of the outcome.:It’s—we don’t have a whole lot of time between now and the time of the
selection being made.Hellard:No, no, no, and I’m glad of that too. I wish it were over with now.
:Do you think it’s over?
Hellard:No, I say I wish it were over.
:Well, I mean do you think in fact it’s over?
Hellard:No, I don’t think you could—
:I mean, obviously it’s not legally over.
Hellard:I don’t think it’s going to be over until the day the votes are counted.
:Won’t be over till it’s over.
Hellard:That’s right. I think there are—there are some lawyers who I believe
will get into it and they may from—from some back home pressure on some—some of the legislators change some legislators and there may be some legislators who will come in broad side.:Where do you—where do you think Spurrier will be in all this?
Hellard:Oh I think he has to be—has no choice, he’s got to be with Pri—with .
:I would think so.
Hellard:He has no choice.
:I would think so. Although I would guess that he’s smooth enough that if
Blandford wins it, he’ll find a way to make an accommodation.Hellard:Well, I’ll tell you how he’s going to do it—he’ll put his Sheets on
Blandford’s side.:Put Sheets on his—
Hellard:Ron Sheets from RECC up there on Blandford’s side.
:Uh-huh.
Hellard:Which is logical because of—of I guess J. R. Miller connections. Even
though Miller’s not, I don’t think, you know, associated with him. The utilities would be covered either way.:Yes, and there’s no conflict between the RECCs and private utilities anymore anyhow.
Hellard:I think they’re the most unified industry down there.
:That’s right. There’s no conflict anymore.
Hellard:Well, let’s talk briefly—let’s get an evaluation, as of this point, your
evaluation of the [Martha Layne] Collins administration to this point. And then I want to talk about the Mondale-Reagan campaign and if we have time then I think we—I’d like to talk about some education.:Well—
Hellard:That suit you okay?
:Certainly. Well, you know, it—it—it’s hard for me to attempt an unbiased
evaluation of the Collins—Collins administration in many ways. And I, you know, when I say some of the things I say I probably would be accused of personal bias and that may be true because I have, you know, she doesn’t like me and I certainly, you know, don’t feel any closeness to her and— Although I sincerely say that I would be very happy to work with her and be of whatever help I could if she felt that I could, but I don’t think she’s every going to feel that way and that perhaps gives me a feeling of some little frustration. In the past I’ve worked with governors that I had not supported in primaries. [John Y.] Brown and to a certain degree with Governor [Wendell] Ford, who on the whole, though I’m in retrospect critical of some aspects of the administration—of his administration—treated me personally very well. And I—I feel first starting with the political side of it, which is probably not the most important but is pretty vital, she’s played a very different role and taken a very different tack on the political side of things than that which Ford took. And I think of the Ford administration because that’s where she got her beginnings politically and that was another occasion on which I had been on the losing side in the primary. I was very active in the [Bert T.] Combs campaign and very close to Governor Combs. But after the primary Ford and—and Mr. Miller made every effort to conciliate our side. They went to Combs right—right at the start and they got him engaged in the campaign to a considerable degree. They had me out on the stump and I worked very hard in that campaign, worked very closely with Miller. I stayed on the state central committee all during the Ford administration. They—not that this was a matter of vital importance, but they retained me in several legal matters to represent them in—in—in cases in court. So I, you know, never felt that there was any policy of exclusion and isolation at that time and—and Ford and Miller, whatever some of the faults of the administration may have been, probably built the party organization to its highest peak of effectiveness that it had been in a long time. And it really was during that administration and that regime that the factional divisions that had riven the party for years, and even generations, were obliterated. We don’t have factions in the way we used to, where you had a [Earle C.] Clements faction and a [A. B. “Happy”] faction or a Combs faction and a faction in every county. Those factions—you may have local factions revolving around local leaders, but you don’t have statewide factions. In many ways the Democratic party was for generations two parties in —kind of like two clans—but really that was sort of wiped out during the Ford administration. Now, I don’t say that Martha Layne has revived exactly factionalism, but I think she has isolated herself politically from the party, or that portion of the party, that wasn’t intimately involved with her own primary campaign. And since she—and since she was not supported by the most active leaders in the party, who either were for [Grady] Stumbo or—or [Harvey] Sloane, and since she only got the vote of one-third of the people that voted in the primary, this has left her administration in some respects, I think, politically isolated and has impaired her effectiveness. Then carrying that into the administrative structure of state government, I think she has done somewhat the same thing. She has appointed mostly people who have had no experience in state government, who have had no—no wide experience in politics and—and who’re sort of strangers to the situation. I mean, who ever heard of Mack Thompson? Who ever heard of Gary Gillis? Who ever heard of most of these cabinet members that she has named? Who, you know, who ever heard of Al Austin? I mean people around did ’cause he’d been around for years as a sort of survivor. I suppose the nearest to—to an appointment she made in her cabinet that had any—any political standing of significance was Charlotte Baldwin, who in a local way had been mayor of Madisonville and obtained some prominence. And Carroll Nicely who, you know, had been in state government before and had during the time he was a publisher down in had had some active connection with politics, but not really a whole lot. So that has given her what I would call sort of an isolated administration. They’re all new faces. And Brown had new faces, in a sense, but they were people of more force and significance than the people that she’s appointed. Now as to her policies, I can’t see what policies she’s had. She had a—a tax program in the legislature, which she didn’t come to till after the session. She—she—she reversed course in the middle of the session which is always a risky thing to do and it was a bust. It was partly a bust because she wasn’t willing to go out and fight for it, or didn’t know how to go out and fight for it, or didn’t have the temperament to go out and fight for it. And because she didn’t have the skill to lobby for it in the legislature the only chance she had to secure what she wanted from the legislature in the way of taxes would have been either to deal with them on a political basis, which she lacked the skill to do or—or even the drive to do, or to go out on the hustings and seek to create enough sentiment to bring pressure on legislators. And that’s always hard to do when a tax program is sprung in the middle of a session and— But even with the difficulties she might have had a shot at it if she had been willing to go out and sort of lay—lay herself on the line for it, but she didn’t. She went around and spoke to a couple of PTA [Parent Teacher Association] meetings—which is sort of like going to a prayer meeting and asking people not to get drunk. Now all that gave it an ineffective start. And I don’t think her role at the Democratic national convention or some of the other things she’s done has really given her any greater degree of strength and security in her—in her base here in . I suppose just the fact that she’s there has made people a little more used to her, but I don’t think that her presence is vividly felt. I don’t think that people think of her as a leader in this state. It comes very close to my mind to approximating a sort of perpetual vacancy in the office. Now, that may be a harsh judgment and it may be a biased judgment and if so it has to be because I—I have searched my mind as best I could to find a more favorable conclusion, but I just can’t get beyond what I have said.Hellard:What about her most recent efforts on behalf of education or her—
:Well, I think they’re well intentioned. I don’t think she really has demonstrated—
Hellard:( )
:—any real grasp of the issues. I think—
Hellard:Is there a genuine commitment there?
:It’s hard to say. I think in so far as she’s capable of genuine commitment
there’s a commitment there. And as far as anything public is concerned I have tried to give evidence of supporting her and praising her for her commitment. But it’s hard for me to think of commitment in compar—when I compare the efforts she’s made with the efforts that people like Governor Clinton and Governor Winter and Governor Graham and Governor Riley and Governor Hunt and Governor Alexander made. I mean the effort hasn’t been there. Now, I think, to say she doesn’t have a commitment is perhaps to expect more of her than—than it’s possible to extract. Because I’m not sure that she has a temperament that is capable of commitment to anything. I think her main commitment was to be nominated for governor and elected governor and once she fulfilled that commitment I don’t know whether she has any other commitment. She, like all governors, she alleges a commitment to industrial growth, economic growth and I’m sure she has that commitment in a sense—nobody’s against that—but I believe that to a considerable degree that the economic development and the course of economic conditions in Kentucky is far more likely to be determined by the trends in the national economy and by long-term economic trends in Kentucky than it is by what a governor does. I don’t say that a governor couldn’t do things so horrible that they retard the economic growth of the state or couldn’t do things so well that they help. But I think most governors exaggerate the degree to which they—indeed I think Governor Brown exaggerated—the degree to which a governor can have—affect the basic economic conditions of the state. We have conditions in that are—that are permanent, semi-permanent, and that are very ominous. The main bases of our economy in are all under attack and are all eroding. Coal is in trouble, tobacco’s in trouble, whiskey is in trouble, the thoroughbred business is about to get into trouble. Our manufacturing base is shrinking. And all those things. And we’re not educationally prepared and scientifically prepared for the era of the service economy and the high technology economy. We haven’t got the educational base for it because it’s primarily an information economy, it’s primarily an—an economy based on intellectual resources rather than natural resources and we haven’t got them. And that’s why education—I’ll just go into that part of it now—that’s why education is a vital component, if not the most vital component, of our industrial and economic progress and development. And we have not got a commitment to a first rate, broad based research university. We’re—she’s trying, I think, to improve the quality of the public schools. She’s done absolutely nothing about higher education and the research capabilities of the state. Higher education is way out on a limb and the limb is—is—is very weak. Neither the higher education establishment itself nor the legislature nor the governor nor the Council on Higher Education have made the—faced the basic problems and made the basic decisions that are required if we’re going to have a system of higher education that—that brings us into the twenty-first century prepared for the kind of economic problems and challenges we’re going to face. And I think that the—the things on which we have depended we cannot abandon—like tobacco and coal and liquor and horses and manufacturing—but they’re not going to employ as many people, furnish as many jobs or give us the broad base that they furnished us in the past. We need to preserve them, restructure them, but we’ve got to find new outlets for our energies and new energies to create new outlets. And I don’t see the leadership there. Now, I—I wish I could find somebody to make the contrary case because I should like to believe something different. I should like to take a more optimistic view of her administration.Hellard:Well, what’s your view of her—her statement that she will pursue
building public sentiment for educational reform, but leave the tax raising to the legislature? Which indicates she’ll not take any hand in—:Well, that just means that, you know—
Hellard:How do you interpret that ( )
:That means she’s going to try to lead the horse to water, but not make him
drink, I reckon. I don’t know. It seems to me that the—the revenue question is so intimately tied to educational reform that it’s sort of Hamlet without the prince. How are you going to reform education without paying for it? There are some things you can do and we’ve already—we’ve already done most of them. or begun to do some of them, but let—let—let’s start taking the things. Everybody thinks that the only—that the only—only call for revenue would be for teachers’ salaries, but teachers’ salaries are not the only—the only educational reform that would require additional revenue. If you were going to have an adequate kindergarten program—we’ve got a kindergarten program on paper, but we don’t have the financing for it. We have not financed reduced class sizes to the degree that that reduction is needed. We have not financed remedial education beyond the second grade. We have done nothing, nothing, about what I think is probably the hardest problem of all to solve in dealing with Kentucky’s peculiar situation, namely the fact that we’re a state now that’s pervasive in its ignorance and educational deficiencies. That we have low per capita income, we have a low rate of literacy, we have a high rate of high school drop outs, we have a low rate of college attendance, a low rate of college graduation and that ignorance begets ignorance, education begets education. That is a cycle of poverty and deprivation that must be broken and that has to start with early childhood education. The most critical phases of it—if we’re going to break that cycle and bring up to adequate levels of ability to learn those children who come from deprived and uneducated and backward homes to a state where they go to school equipped to learn—because I think that the performance of children in school is to a considerable extent predestined by what takes place in their homes and their lives and their communities before they ever walk in the schoolhouse door.Hellard:Hold it a minute. Side two. interview.
:Have I got it?
Hellard:Uh-huh. Your right again.
:Have I got it?
Hellard:Yeah.
:In other words, I think the key to ’ particular situation is early childhood
education which may begin from the time of birth as I said to the State Board of Education, “between the womb and the first grade” and we—that’s enormously expensive. It would involve a full financing of the Head Start program. It would involve moving the Head Start program down to the—to the three year olds. It would involve a drastic improvement in the kindergarten program. And it would involve some type of—of attempts to stimulate educational activity in the home by some outside intervention at the earliest months of life. Such simple things as whether there’s somebody to read to a child, somebody to draw for a child, somebody to teach a child to sing—to sing, to show them beautiful pictures. There’s an enormous difference between the educational potential of a child who walks in the first grade already taught to read, already knowing what addition and subtraction are, already having seen beautiful works of art, already having learned songs and verses, already having been taught maybe to spell a little bit, already being familiar with the world of books, just—I’m talking about—not—not geniuses or anything like that, but just what the ordinary middle-class child has—has gone through before he goes to school and the child who goes simply out of a home where none of those influences have been brought to bear. And—and that is where your drop outs start, that’s where your slow learners are made. It’s what I call—and—and some of my friends among the social workers don’t like it—I call it the crippled children’s syndrome. And that’ll take money. It certainly will take money to give us a first grace—first class comprehensive research university. I—so to say that one is for educational reform, but is going to leave the financing of that reform to somebody else, is as I said, like playing Hamlet without the prince. And I think we made a lot—good deal of progress in the last session of the legislature toward accountability and that—and those types of reform that—that center on and revolve around accountability. Although I’m not sure we have chosen the right tools to obtain accountability. We’ve gone on now on a great binge of making test scores the test of educational effectiveness and I think that’s bunk. I think that’s a form of discrimination. I think value-added is the best test of educational performance. What the teacher or the school gets in the form of raw material and what value it adds to that raw material and you can’t judge that simply by judging the value of the output at the end of the process. You’ve got to judge what the value was at the beginning of the process and how much has been added to it or subtracted from it. Do I make that clear?Hellard:Yes.
Prichard:You know, a teacher who took a bunch of little black children or a
bunch of little mountain children who came of illiterate parents and walked in the second grade with little or no attainment and added X Y or Z to the attainment with which they came in the classroom is a far more effective teacher than one that took a bunch of bright, well-scrubbed children who’d been read to and sung to and been around the stimulus of educated parents and came in and added little or nothing during that year. And I think that’s one of the things our committee—Hellard:I’m going to light that for you Prich.
:—is devoting a great deal of its attention to is what are the criteria of
effective schools. Got it?Hellard:Yeah.
:And I think the nearest criterion that we’ve been able to come to yet—although
we’re still working on it—is that of value added. You know, what has the school, what has that particular teacher, what has that particular school, added to the intellectual and educational attainments of the children. And it’s perfectly obvious that in a place like the fact that they have high test scores doesn’t prove a damn thing because they ought to have high test scores. Hell, they’ve got university professors for parents, a lot of them, I don’t mean that literally but— On the other hand the test scores in a county like Jackson or Leslie are bound to be low because the education attainment of the parents are low. And the question is how much can you over come that in the school? Now that—that—and then the next most critical issue, it seems to me, in education is what are you driving for? Are you driving for and striving for specific job related training at the elementary and secondary level or are you driving for a broad preparation for citizenship, life in the community and sharing in the heritage of our society and ability to express one’s self and to use the language coherently to express and relate to ideas and concepts whether mathematical or poetic, rhetorical, historical, or otherwise. And of course that is the kind of education that I think is important—not only from the standpoint of personal development and the standpoint of participation in a democracy and the health of a society—but it’s important from the standpoint of vocational choice because the average career comprehends four or five different kinds of jobs. And you prepare for one type of job and you train—we trained welders for thirty years in this nation and this state, long after we didn’t need any more welders. We had vo-ag courses long after the number of farmers were shrinking every year. Specific vocational training at the elementary and secondary level is in my opinion of dubious value. I—so—so the second thing I would emphasize on education is importance of what I call broad, liberal education for everybody. And I don’t believe there’s some just fit for it and some not fit for it. I believe it’s—in a democracy it’s important for everybody. But, you know, I don’t find you spec—you talk about—ask about Governor Collins and educational reform, I find no—no real evidence that she grasps any of these things or that she really—I—I think she—she’s never gotten beyond just a few bromides.Hellard:Have you ever had any in-depth conversation with her on the subject of education?
:I’ve never had an in-depth conversation with her on any subject.
Hellard:[laughing] Have you ever had a conversation with her?
:Oh, perfunctorily, yes, but no more than perfunctorily. I find it very hard to
penetrate her exterior. I find it very hard to get inside her. I don’t believe she reveals herself or likes to reveal herself very much. Now, I don’t know how she is with—with people to whom she’s close ’cause I’ve never been that close to her, but I’ve never felt ever in her presence that she let her hair down or—or opened up. And I don’t think that has anything to do with her being a woman because I have, you know, literally dozens and hundreds of active women friends whom—who—who give an entirely different impression—impression to me.Hellard:So you don’t really know whether she agrees with you or not, basically.
:Oh! You know, what was it, there used to be a little nursery rhyme about Mother
Goose had a son named Jack, a plain looking lad, he was not very good and not very bad. I don’t know that she ever agrees or disagrees with anybody very much. I never find much evidence of any strong feeling or conviction that she has on any side of any question.Hellard:Well, given that fact and the fact that she’s not going to support or
not going to—not going to provide leadership for a—for a financing of educational reform, do you see any real hope for substantive reform in the next—this administration?Prichard:Oh, I suppose if you could get a procession moving, she might be
willing to, you know—what was it?—there goes the mob, I must march at the head, I’m their leader, I must follow them ’cause I’m their leader. I don’t know. I think if the crowd ever got big enough she might march at the head of it, but she’d have to be sure it was a winning issue.Hellard:What about Alice McDonald?
:Well, I think is—
Hellard:Is she receptive to your—to your—
:Oh, much more. I think is a much sharper-edged instrument than Martha Layne. I
think —now I’m going to say that I think has a conniving side to her, has a hard, ruthless side to her—but I think is extremely bright and energetic and willing to take some risks. And I think in general she’s committed to the right—I think she’s going to, you know, to some extent cover her tracks and protect herself, but I think she’s committed. I think feels that her chances through leadership—I, you know, I—I think in a sense the contrast is very great. You know, doesn’t have the—the sort of soft, feminine appeal that Martha Layne seems to have for some people. has a hard, cutting edge and—and, you know, I—I think she’s rather calculating. But I think she’s shrewd enough to realize that you have to take some risks. And I think she’s bright enough to understand what the issues are and I’ll offer you an example. She was elected with the support of the KEA [Kentucky Education Association], vital financial support as well as political support, but I think she has been very careful, don’t you, to keep herself at a moderate distance from being viewed as just a KEA puppet.Hellard:Yes.
Prichard:I think she has very skillfully managed to keep them from breaking with
her, but she has been far from a—well, just take the career ladder, I know Alice is walking a—on tender feet in that issue, but she’s pretty clearly committed to the career ladder and as far as I can see the KEA is still adamantly opposed to any concept of a career ladder. And indeed the KEA has been a great disappointment to me. I’ve always been on their side. I believe in collective bargaining or professional negotiations, whatever you want to call it, I’ve always believed in it. I—I believe in public employee unions. I think if I were an employee in the public sector, whether in education or anywhere else, I think I would want an organization to represent me and try to negotiate for me. But I think the KEA has some of the weaknesses of all the current trade union thinking—which is to view their interests in excessively narrow terms. And they seem to me to fear educational reform when they should be embracing it. Very much in the same way that some labor unions were hostile to productivity measures and things of that sort. I think the KEA has a deep suspicion of anything that tends to emphasize qualitative differences in the teaching force, or profession. And I—and I don’t, as I say, I don’t say that out of hostility because the concept of teacher organization is one that I favor. I think the KEA and teachers’ associations have over the years done a great deal of good. But I think they—they are not adjusting to some of the current challenges as they should. And by the way, I am not terribly encouraged by Martha Layne’s commission on educational reform. I have a feeling that the commission is not becoming deeply engaged in the—in the issues. I have a feeling that Ray Nystrand’s going to write the report and they’re going to rubber stamp it. Hell, they’ve only had one meeting, I think, or maybe two. You might check that, Vic.Hellard:I will. What’s—what’s Nystrand’s background?
:Well, I’ve forgotten where he comes from. He—
Hellard:He’s not there because he’s an educator is he?
:Yes! Oh yes, he’s Dean of the of at the . I—I don’t think he had any great
connection with her before the—Hellard:Well, I somehow got the impression his main role was to blunt Secretary McDonald—
:That’s true—
Hellard:( )
:—but he—he’s leaving at the end of the year. I think that was his role. She
promised Alice McDonald that she would not name a Secretary of Education unless she named her—that she’d either not name one or name . And was much embittered when she named Nystrand, but I don’t think Nystrand has had that much impact. I think his main impact has been working with this committee. He was, I think, probably recommended to her by the superintendent in , who seems to be playing his own game on all this stuff, Ingerton, or whatever his name is. Nystrand is not a fool, he—he’s a fellow—a good deal of what he says is very sensible. But he’s not, you know, coming from a college of education, he’s bound to have sustained some of the crippling effects of that ambiance.Hellard:Well, let’s move to higher education for just a minute and talk about
the—the discussion of the merger.:Well, my an—my first comment on that is merger for what? It’s like saying
you’re for a single governing board for all the universities. Is the answer to be found in structures or in decisions? There are certain decisions we need to be ma—that need to be made in higher education. And changes in structure are beneficial only if they help to bring about a better making of those decisions. And I have to be convinced that change in structure will do any more than leave the same old issues to be resolved in a different forum. I—I don’t know. What do you think?Hellard:Well, I—I think we’re talking about a lot of personalities right now.
:Well, but—but you know—
Hellard:I don’t know ( )
:—if you’re talking about personalities, [Otis] Singletary’s not going to be
here but another year or two, couple of years. I’m not sure how long Swain’s going to be here. Swain is a very ambitious man, he’s a much more astute man than Singletary, much more effective man than Singletary, but I’m not sure that he’s going to stay in all that time. I think he’s more ambitious than that. And I’m beginning to hear comments about him around that are not as laudatory as the original assessments—that he’s manipulative and—but I don’t know. I—I’m not close enough to the situation lately to know. I was much impressed by him when I met him and still retain that impression to a considerable degree. But the real question about merger of those two institutions is—is not just one of personalities, it’s one of who’s going to do what and with which and to whom.Hellard:Well, I—I agree with that, but I—I—I’m saying right now in the initial
stages it seems to me it’s a matter of personalities will rule.:Well, Singletary—
Hellard:( )
:—Singletary and Swain were the people that initiated the—the idea of merger.
The first conversations I ever heard about it, in a serious way, since Earle Clements, who advocated it way back before the University of Louisville ever came into the state system because he foresaw what was going to happen to that university and he was rebuffed by the Louisville establishment—Louisville establishment. But the next time it came to be considered was in the mid ’60s and I was on the committee, representing the Council on Higher Education, and we came very close to it and the props got kicked from under that really because—because of [Jack] Oswald’s departure. We were very close to agreement. But then the University of Louisville began to put a lot more goodies on the tree—they bought the Kentucky Southern campus for instance and took on that school of music out there at the Norton estate— and that began to frighten the University of Kentucky. And so that was abandoned I guess around—what?—around 1967.Hellard:What was the element—the elements of that—that agreement that was almost achieved?
:Well, it was just to—to have a single commonwealth university with two
campuses, a chancellor, a president, and two chancellors, a single board. But really we never got to the substantive question again of what— We were still in the period of expansion then and the question of allocation of resources was not so urgent. And the , at that time, was not in the state system. You know, it didn’t come into the state system until 1970. And then when they got in the state system they got in all—virtually unconditionally and the bargaining chips went the other direction. And it looked for awhile—since Jefferson County was gaining so much in population and legislative representation with the one man one vote principle of constitutional law—it looked like the University of Louisville had all the cards in its hand. But since then the situation has been changed, the community colleges have grown, population of has remained static. We’re now thinking, you know, enrollments are not on the rise. We’re now dealing with such things as two huge—since then the—this huge medical center has been built at the , which makes an enormous difference. Indeed I’m not sure that the critical issue of merger isn’t how it’s to affect the operation of the two medical centers. Because if you look at where they money goes there’s a whole lot of it goes into those two medical centers and those two hospitals. 1:00