Announcing his resignation yesterday, Vice President for Administrative Affairs Doug Duncan will leave some big shoes to fill. Although his 17-month stint at the university was relatively short, Duncan was still a towering presence on the campus, placing himself at the center of the campus-wide debate on the Purple Line while orchestrating negotiations for East Campus, the university’s most ambitious development project in 50 years.
In many ways, the former Montgomery County executive and Rockville mayor brought an ideal resume to the position. He had the executive experience necessary to head the university’s $1.3 billion budget. And he had local connections he banked on in working with East Campus’ developer Foulger-Pratt Argo, who also remodeled downtown Silver Spring when Duncan was county executive.
Still, Duncan never seemed to entirely shake his political past as Mote’s number-three-in-charge, and his tenure does raise questions about whether Mote should look for a replacement with such a political background. While Duncan supported an east-west rail link between Silver Spring and Bethesda as county executive, his lively personality seemed to boil over early on in the Purple Line debates. Moreover, a spat last month with University System of Maryland lobbyist P.J. Hogan spilled into the mainstream press. Though Duncan characterized the feud as a misunderstanding later on in a press release, in an interview yesterday Mote said the incident “may have influenced [Duncan’s] thinking.”
But the importance of political connections for the job of vice president for administrative affairs cannot be overlooked. Transportation Secretary John Porcari, who preceded Duncan, came to the job with experience as transportation secretary in the administration of former Gov. Parris Glendening. And Duncan’s replacement will have to wrangle with a slate of hotly contested local issues, not only including East Campus and the Purple Line, but also the future of Route 1 and a controversial Campus Connector road proposal.
The questions about the merits of picking a local politician ultimately boil down to whether a candidates’ past will hurt more than it will help. The answer will obviously depend on the person, but facing a state deficit of $1.3 billion, the university would also be wise to look into a business-oriented selection. In 2003, the three finalists not selected to replace Porcari had previously held top financial posts at other universities.
Whatever its considerations, we hope the administration moves quickly to find a suitable replacement for Duncan. Duncan’s departure could not have come at a worse time for the university, as it begins to embark on a 10-year path toward the dramatic changes the Strategic Plan outlines. Plus, as the university hits the halfway point in its $1 billion capital campaign, an opening in a top administrative post can’t look attractive to donors.
Duncan was selected to replace Porcari a little more than two months after Porcari’s resignation, and we can see why they acted fast to choose him. But it’s unlikely a candidate with the political and executive credentials Duncan and Porcari possessed will emerge again. It took the university two search committees and a year and a half to settle on Porcari, and in this case, university officials won’t have that kind of time luxury. They’ve set a summer 2009 target date for their choice. We’ll be holding them to it.
