This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

There is consensus that something is broken with our school board elections but disagreement on how to fix it. A couple weeks ago, we tried and failed to eliminate the governor's nominating commission and replace it with direct, non-partisan state school board elections.

Last week the Senate voted to assign education to the governor rather than the state school board. The next day Sen. Howard Stephenson unveiled his bill calling for partisan school board elections.

Should the governor appoint public school leadership? The Utah Constitution balances power carefully between the three branches of government. Yet human nature, the desire for leadership, and the urge to make things happen quickly have concentrated power in the executive.

Legislators have also ceded power to the executive branch by writing oversimplified laws that require extensive administrative rulemaking. In addition, the governor has acquired power through involvement in the budget process, a role not granted by the Utah Constitution. I can't imagine why we'd want to give the governor yet more power.

So what about partisan elections? Much has been made of the public's opposition to partisan school board elections, but let's start by examining the arguments in favor of partisan elections. Here are the arguments I've heard:

Other things being equal, working with delegates tends to be less expensive than campaigning to voters at large. Delegates gain an in-depth understanding of the issues and are thus better equipped to vet the candidates, I'm told, than voters in non-partisan primary elections.

I've also heard that state school board districts are too big (roughly twice the size of a Utah Senate district) for direct campaigns.

Others say that current board members don't really represent the ideology of Utah voters.

Let's begin with the expense of campaigning in large districts. Non-partisan municipal races are often larger than Utah House and Senate races, yet they tend to cost less.

A convention opponent of mine last year, a well-respected former Bountiful city councilman, spent around $5,000 getting elected to the city council a few years back.

In contrast, I spent more than $8,000 to get through the convention and came in a close second.

By the time I won the general election, I had spent many times that amount, as had several of my freshman counterparts. Clearly, making school board races partisan will not make them less expensive.

And, of course, non-partisan races can be quite large. To use the most notable example, candidates for Salt Lake City mayor (nominally non-partisan) somehow get their message out to an electorate much larger than any of our state school board districts without the benefit of a partisan nominating system.

When all is said and done, I trust voters. I won't apologize for that. Given a sufficiently long campaign season, with nonpartisan primary and general elections, I am absolutely confident in the public's ability to make informed choices, just as they do with nonpartisan municipal elections. Striving to make these elections partisan is a fight we don't need.

Although the debate on the subject of partisan school board elections centers on vetting candidates properly, the real goal seems to be to change the political makeup of the board. But it would not be surprising if things didn't turn out quite that way.

A significant consequence of partisan school board elections might well be that educators and citizens that care about education would attend caucuses and become delegates in greater numbers than they have in the past.

They would do that to support the candidates they considered most friendly to education. Those same delegates would also be the ones choosing legislators.

Think about it. Considering Republican delegates as a whole, partisan school board elections could result in a move to the center.

If Democrats were to vote tactically rather than on principle, they might be the biggest boosters for such a change.

Rep. Jim Nielson, R-Bountiful, is an architect and small-business owner. He authored 1st Substitute House Bill 264 that proposed eliminating the governor's nominating commission for state school board members, creating direct nonpartisan elections, and moving those elections to odd-numbered years together with nonpartisan municipal elections.