Paying for college:
) Paralegal/Executive Assistant for Vice President & General Counsel. After budget decentralization efforts in FY2018, many aspects of contracting and procurement were reorganized to the Office of the Vice President & General Counsel (VPGC). Currently, the VPGC is responsible for the Board of Trustees, legal services, government affairs, human resources, institutional research—and now, to a substantial degree, contracting and procurement. The reassignment of procurement to the VPGC’s office, while well-advised from a compliance perspective, has created a substantial workload shift for both Ryan Hagemann and Carson Campbell. Further, the VPGC is the only vice president on campus—and the only General Counsel among the seven public universities—without an executive assistant assigned to the position. This requested position attempts to tackle both issues: necessary assistance with moving contracts and procurement along in a timely manner and providing indispensable calendar and administrative management for the VPGC’s various units, particularly government affairs and the substantial burden managing a legislative session creates. Without this position, compliance and timely completion of the hundreds of contracts required annually for the university, not to mention, proactive management of WOU’s legislative outreach, will suffer. The ongoing funds listed above includes salary, OPE, and a modest amount for S&S.
See above. The request articulates the impact of the request, as well. Compliant contracts, timely legal advice and contracts, and more proactive/effective deployment of the office are all impacted by this request.
All units on campus that use legal advice or contracts on campus, and the applicants, students, faculty and staff that they serve. These core services are indispensable to any and all campus units that serve students, faculty, and staff. Enrollment, affordability, and new programs are all impacted by the ability of legal services/contracting to discharge duties quickly. All units that serve students and faculty benefit from the initiative, as well as those that remain focused on the president's initiatives.
The essential advantage of a Paralegal/Executive Assistant to the VPGC for the University's benefit is (1) enhanced responsiveness to the hundreds of requests for advice received each year and (2) specifically, reduced wait time for consistent, legally compliant contracts to various units across campus. The outcomes that will demonstrate the efficacy of this hire would be (1) inventory of all requests for legal advice, (2) tracking of responsiveness to requests for legal advice, (3) inventory of all requsitions for contract requests, (4) tracking of the responsiveness and time necessary to mvoe a contract from requsition to completion, and (5) inventory of proactive projects the VPGC is able to undertake without assuming the logistical duties that Office (VPGC and Deputy GC) now do without assistance.
If approved, the Office would move as swiftly as possible to post the search and hire the Paralegal/Executive Assistant to the VPGC. If approved, I would like the search to start before July 1, 2019 so the successful candidate can start as close to the start of the fiscal year as possible. Currently, there is office space avaiable for the position in the VPGC's office suite. Currently, the legislative intern is using that office space, but should be finished with that internsghip by the end of spring term. The opportunity to train and collaborate with the successful candidate over the summer would be indispensible to its success.
The contingency plan would be to maintain the current state of affairs, with perhaps some modifications to other units on campus that would be delegated some limited authority to process contracts. With no other capacity to which to turn, the contingency plan, outside of some modest delegation of authority, would be status quo. We would likely train units to get us contract requests as far in advance as possible because of the anticipated wait time. Any contingency plan, in my view, cannot sacfirice compliance with state and federal law with regard to contracts or legal advice.
The general counsel at every other public university has either a paralegal or executive assistant. Every other public university--whether or not in the legal office--has staff capacity to process contracts. This position/functionality--fundamental to the effieicnt operation of the university in a compliant, proactive manner--is at every other public university campus. WOU is a unique outlier in that the VPGC discharges three fundamental roles (legal/government affairs/board secretary)--all without assistance from a paralegal or executive assistant.
The provision of legal advice and the necessity of contracts is an enterprise-wide phenomoenon. All units will be adversely impacted--from internship agreements necessary to place out students in dozens of sites to enhance their education with high-impact practices to construction contracts in the millions of dollars to upgrade our facilities for the benefit of students, staff, and faculty. In particular, Facilities and sponsored research/projects have the need for a tremendous number of contracts and, as procurement/this budget request has evolved, those two units in particular, as well as Business Services, have been consulted. Their perspective, and support, has been instrumental in the advocacy for this budget request.
The mitigation of risk to the University and the ability for all units on campus to discharge their duties in a legally compliant, efficient manner justifies this budget request.
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