By The Signal Editorial Board
A decades-long career in local public service is coming to an ignominious end at College of the Canyons.
And no, we’re not talking about the one you think we are, the headline-dominating decision by the COC board of trustees to show Chancellor Dianne Van Hook the door after 36 years in which she led COC’s transition from a sleepy upstart to a jewel of the California community college system.
This time, we’re talking about one of those very trustees who, in their de facto firing of Van Hook, chose to call it “administrative leave,” even as word hit the streets that the moving vans were being summoned to clean out Van Hook’s office.
The record of service that is now going down in infamy amidst all of this?
That would be COC Trustee Joan MacGregor.
Her legacy is forever tarnished — and it’s not necessarily because she voted to oust Van Hook. We weren’t in the closed sessions that took place over the past four board meetings in which the trustees discussed their reasons, valid or not, for removing the longtime, highly respected COC chancellor.
That’s not what is destroying the way MacGregor should be remembered in the community once she makes her resignation official.
What’s destroying any legacy MacGregor might have left is the way she’s leaving office, thumbing her nose at democratic principles as she goes.
MacGregor has been calling herself a short-timer for months now. She’s said at least twice that the next meeting would be her last. But she never officially turned in her resignation.
Along comes a deadline of sorts: June 27 was the last day MacGregor could have tendered her resignation and still get the seat on the November ballot, to consolidate it with the presidential election, a ballot on which four of the five board seats are already scheduled to be decided as the terms of Edel Alonso, Jerry Danielson and Sebastian Cazares are set to expire,
One other board member, Chuck Lyon, did resign by the June 27 deadline, so his seat will be on the November ballot along with those currently held by Alonso, Danielson and Cazares.
MacGregor’s term would not expire until 2026, so if she resigns now then someone has to take over the Trustee Area 5 seat for the final two years or so of her term.
That leaves the remaining board members to decide whether to conduct a separate special election at much greater expense, or appoint a replacement for MacGregor. They will of course choose the power move of appointing a replacement.
MacGregor didn’t make the deadline — and she missed it on purpose, having previously announced she intended to resign, first saying it would be July, then saying it would be around Aug. 5.
Once the board decided on Wednesday to put Van Hook on administrative leave, MacGregor announced that it was her last meeting.
She stuck around just long enough to fire Van Hook — and to disenfranchise the voters of Trustee Area 5.
She admitted it was intentional: She wants the remaining three board members to pick her replacement, rather than letting the voters of her district have a voice. We suppose one could say she was at least honest about her preference for cronyism over voter choice.
“I think that the last three appointments that this district has had appointment processes over the many years that I participated in, the field of candidates was three or four times the amount of people that filed for election,” MacGregor said last month. “And I think that people, for whatever reasons, are much more apt to come in and interview for an appointment to the board than they are to run.”
Where to begin?
Of course people are more apt to apply for an appointment rather than compete in an election. It’s easier, and less expensive, and allows the appointee to get a board seat simply by being a crony of the existing board members.
Apparently, that’s the way MacGregor likes it.
Most assuredly, the appointee to be named later by Alonso, Cazares and Danielson will know the seat is in the bag before the trio votes unanimously in favor. And you can bet with a high degree of certainty that the appointee, like those three board members, will have the support of the college’s employee unions.
Voters be damned. Taxpayers be damned.
Contrary to popular belief, we do not live in a “democracy.” We live in a republic, where the people elect representatives to make decisions on their behalf. But there’s still the democratic principle involved, letting the voters choose their representatives.
Joan MacGregor is depriving the voters of Trustee Area 5 the opportunity to do that. It’s ironic, with all of the nationwide hand-wringing over “saving democracy,” that someone on the local level is tossing the very principle into the dumpster fire that COC’s governance has become of late.
MacGregor served 20 years on the board of the Sulphur Springs Union School District, before being elected to the COC board in 1993. It’s a long record of community service and we’re sure she has done plenty of good for the community over those decades of service.
But what will we remember most?
We will remember Joan MacGregor giving voters the finger on her way out.
And bragging about it.
