At a special meeting held by the Mott Community College Board of Trustees on Monday, the board attorney raised legal concerns about conflict of interest on the board related to a recent, controversial vote to permanently hire the interim president, according to a video recording of the meeting. Even so, the board majority voted in favor of the appointment again.
At the meeting, the attorney, William Brickley, said he had warned board chairman Andy Everman that then-interim president Shaunda Richardson-Snell had hired the daughter of another trustee as her real estate agent—a possible conflict of interest that Brickley thought should be disclosed before the board voted on Richardson-Snell’s permanent appointment. But Everman didn’t do so, and the motion to make the interim president permanent eventually passed.
As a result, Brickley told the board he couldn’t participate in the drafting of Richardson-Snell’s contract.
“I felt that this violated my ethical obligation because I was prohibited from performing any act which I would consider to be illegal, and preparing a contract which would eventually be considered void I thought would be considered illegal,” Brickley said. He added that he had informed the board in a recent legal memo that he would have to withdraw as counsel.
Richardson-Snell said at Monday’s meeting that she wasn’t aware of Brickley’s instructions to Everman and told the board they should go ahead and conduct a national presidential search.
“I agree a process should be followed … I will take the lead right now and instruct and ask that the board make the decision to do a national search, because I do know that if I am the appropriate person to lead Mott Community College, which I do believe that I am, then that will be the ultimate outcome,” she said.
Trustee Michael Freeman demanded Everman be removed as chair and Richardson-Snell step down. But the board majority voted again, nonetheless, to permanently instate Richardson-Snell with a 4-to-3 vote.
Some faculty members were outraged by the outcome. Kim Owens, president of the college’s faculty union, the Mott Community College Education Association, called the move “absolutely appalling and shameful.”
“What unfolded tonight is yet another display of this board’s lack of transparency and ethics,” Owens said in a news release from the union. “It became crystal clear tonight that four members of this board have their own agenda in the appointment of this president and not the best interests of Mott or the students and community who we serve.”
