Five Seats in Search of a Regent

The LA Times is carrying a story about Governor Brown's seeming reluctance to fill five empty seats on the UC Board of Regents.  Speculation appears in the article about the motive.  A gubernatorial spokesperson says there is no motive.  But there could be an agenda.  The governor has been attending Regents meetings as an ex officio Regent and has noted that he is technically the president of the Board.  He has been pushing for online ed and performance standards.  (He line-item vetoed a mandate for UC he himself had inserted in the latest state budget on the promise that UC would follow the mandate anyway.)  However, were he to decide UC wasn't moving in the right direction, appointing five like-minded Regents would surely have an impact on policy.

In any case, you can find the LA Times article at
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-uc-regents-vacancies-20130904,0,2945713.story

The seats on the Regents become empty as terms expire and at least one Regent misses his former colleagues: