Illustrated Daily; 5112; Frank Kleinhenz

There's someone asked me one time which was more difficult running the City of Albuquerque or being University President and without hesitation I say being University President because of the clientele group that you deal with and politics is much more intense in the University campus than it is in this setting but it's the different kind of politics it isn't partisan it's professional it's it's a dedication to the discipline that the faculty member has associated himself with or herself with for so many years. Hello it is filled the headlines for a week now the City of Albuquerque and the mayor

who heads this municipal government is losing a chief administrative officer the University of Albuquerque is gaining a chancellor and the man in transition is one of the most colorful, toughest and wittiest public figures around today announcing my replacement this morning Frank Shafani please stand I should point out that he's my replacement as bus boy at the restaurant that my wife has in an age of frequently bland and tepid bureaucrats Frank Kleinhence has often seen an outstanding and outrageous exception to that rule it used to be an axiom of public administration that bureaucrats like small children should be seen

but not heard should as some have put it beyond tap not on top but skillful administrator though he is Kleinhence has rarely fit that model his management style alone is known to have struck terror in subordinates at city hall pitty the city employee who laid to work must share with Frank Kleinhence one of those crowded elevators where in the presence of god co-workers and though simply doing business at city hall the prospect of a Kleinhence tongue lashing was an eternal dread his views on the news media well some of them I doesn't repeat on television suffice it to say he once pondered in my presence the question are news reporters willfully stupid or are they simply maliciously ignorant two city council staff members were leaning on their chairs and chatting when one of them suddenly turned

and smashed a tiny snail creeping on the ground behind him why did you do that asked his partner the darn things been following me around all they exclaimed the other one Kleinhence is an original the tough to tonic he has been called but he is bright well informed hard working and possessed of an ascetic and sometimes even wicked wit while other top municipal bureaucrats rarely hazard a humorous jab at elected members of the Albuquerque city council not so Kleinhence the council itself Kleinhence has characterized as a necessary evil and individual city councilors have fair no better city councilor Ken Schultz Kleinhence once remarked is the world's only known survivor of a carisma bypass operation at a committee meeting not long ago Kleinhence introduced what he described

as a new city councilor a robot named Fred Burns but beneath the wicked wit is a rare and dedicated public spirited citizen returning to what he calls home the university on the Mesa west of the Rio Grande and institution he has served before as president the university of Albuquerque whose delicate financial future now belongs to its new chancellor Frank what again is the dictionary definition of a chancellor as I understand it tell the chancellor is an overbearing dictator usually one of Germanic origin did you ask that you be called chancellor of the university of Albuquerque after you found the definition before I found the definition what kind of a division of labor are we talking about here there will be a president father academic bride at the university of Albuquerque there will be a chancellor Frank Kleinhence

the chancellor in this environment is going to be responsible for the internal financial operation of the institution and also responsible for bringing the curriculum into place and put it in sync with what exists now on the financial side and then begin to enlarge you and about that I mean will probably and father McBride and I have talked about this already add to the course offerings in the short run perhaps for an indefinite period of time and the other part of it is going to have to be mounting a very aggressive student recruitment program and we had that at one time in fact we had national representation our recruitment efforts bringing students in from New York Chicago west coast and we'll be getting that again you've been there before generally credited with having earlier kept

the financial wolves from the doors you're back there soon we'll be back there again how did today's financial problems of the university of Albuquerque compare to what you encountered in the early 1970 very much very similar we came here my wife and I came here with our family in 1968 and in two weeks I went home and so Norma I've affiliated myself with a bankrupt institution we had best find some other location but then went back and talked with some of the faculty members there and there are some long time very dedicated faculty said this is the problem that I see now we're going to have to work together to solve it and we did and I think essentially the same pattern exists today for whatever reason and we should be able to go through a somewhat similar exercise with the faculty

in writing the some of the distortions that have occurred during the past several years you need to get beyond the point however of going periodically back to the university of Albuquerque to keep it on its financial feet over in the long run where is the solution and how do you accomplish it I think understand that there was a change in ownership during the past few years and that probably helped to disrupt the basic mission of that institution once now there is stable ownership reaffirmation of its basic mission reestablished strong internal controls continue to recruit students not only from Albuquerque the region but nationally once those are all back in place I think that institution will not have much

to worry about aside from the normal changes that occur in the economic environment which affect all of us sure when it appeared the U of A might well go under I did not meet a single person in this community but who hoped it wouldn't from very influential people just to the ordinary citizen it's going to take more than just good wishes and lots of love frank line hands I mean where is it where is it out there well Father McBride talks great deal about the endowment right I have a somewhat different approach but he's right to this extent that to operate a private institution with some of the extras that are needed for students an endowment does become necessary we didn't have an endowment at the time that I was there first goal we were able to organize internally and operate

internally and externally substantially on the income that was derived from student attendance well it's a business and you approach it from that point of view and that's the way we'll approach it again are they go back the endowment is going to have to be generated and that's going to mean the support has to come from rather substantial people substantial financially who want to be assured that the university is going to continue to exist and I think there are there are enough people out there of substantial means community state nation and that support is going to be forthcoming I was going to ask you about that because the great endowed universities were endowed at a time when there was lots of big money out there and there was almost a sense of charity and civic responsibility I sometimes think we don't have today first can you do endowments today well yeah

yes it's possible to do endowments if you can connect with a person family or substantial organization it's willing to give you several million dollars the proceeds of which then will be used to interest earnings will be used to operate the institution and one would hope that those that several million dollars could over a period of time grow to 8 million 10 million 15 million proceeds then being plugged back into the institution I don't I think it's a lot more difficult today and it has been very difficult here in Albuquerque because you don't have in Albuquerque the wealthy old established families who generally contributed to the universities as for example they did in my hometown Cleveland those well established families who contributed to the universities the arts the science museums

we didn't we don't have that here but there are still ways of generating enough endowment income from many other sources to get the job done all right I'm convinced of that the other point you mentioned beginning of this conversation was that curriculum of course offerings may be out of sync with well student needs and financial resources what that mean okay what the sisters of St. Francis when they originally established that school sought as a teaching college there was a need at the time to prepare teachers for the state of New Mexico and they established that as their mission gradually however the world expanded for them and came world war two growing interest in on the part of more young people to attend college and universities they expanded their curricular offerings but always built those

curricular offerings around a core program known as the liberal core liberal arts this was perpetuated after World War II and was still operative when I arrived first in 1968 even they'd even gone beyond the original concept of liberal arts institution by getting into master's degree programs you have a most people are not aware offered a master's in education at one time but central to their educational mission was that liberal core and I tried to perpetuate that because my background right was exactly that kind of an education but surrounding that I saw opportunities for service to the community and so began to organize a number of two year degree programs but each one of those two year degree programs had to participate in the liberal core what that liberal core do ethics philosophy logic

concentration on being able to think and translate what you read into active and operative decision making and that's the kind of education that kind of flickered away and when Father McBride came there several years ago he said we will return to the liberal concept but what he talked about was a liberal arts institution built upon a limited enrollment and Father admits this today what he didn't realize was he cut back on the enrollment too fast and in so doing lost the income and so he lost the very thing that was needed possible to accomplish that's right so what we need to do is rebuild and establish a broader base part of a university's function it seems to me is to offer the broadest kind

of curriculum depending upon the assessment of the needs that are found within the community and within the state and we need to do that again you know I'm listening to you talk here so you're left the U of A the first time out your reputation and you could walk down water at least it would need to bridge perhaps you got across the Rio Grande don't you personally have to call that Pudasca be walking on water Pudasca be don't you personally have something to lose if you can't pull it off the second time I don't think about that I don't know I don't think about losing anything I guess you don't you've worked in the public sector in the private sector you've administered large organizations in business education government which requires the greatest skills which has the greatest rewards I'm going to say education and that's where it requires the greatest skills and

has the greatest rewards I think well I'm sure my fellow faculty members will not be offended when I say faculty members wake up every morning and think each one of them that they speak with God daily and this is what this is an attitude they become come accustomed to because they're in the classroom and they're teachers and they're paid to profess that's right it's interesting to work with a group of people like that someone asked me one time which was more difficult running the city of Albuquerque or being a university president and without hesitation I say being a university president because of the clientele group that you deal with and politics is much more intense in the university campus than it is in this setting but it's the different kind of politics it isn't partisan it's professional it's it's a

dedication to the discipline that the faculty member has associated himself with or herself with for so many years and can the secret be let out it's often egos and cold egos yes that's right once you associate yourself with a discipline and become skilled in it and you think soon that you know everything there is to know about everything regarding that discipline then egos are bound to clash let's mind the wit and wisdom of frank line hands and what time we have left in a nutshell frank line hands on the news media and its coverage of city hall what what is the news media has gone so far stray I sometimes think that all of them are vying for positions before the Pulitzer Committee I'm not sure what it is reorganized symposium not too long ago news media people from newspapers TV and city hall

try and get to understand where each side was coming from I don't know that it yielded with great deal there was quite a bit of intense discussion and oddly enough some of that discussion and argumentation occurred among the members of the media rather than among the between the and city hall how news reporting should be accomplished and what what limits their word to the gathering of news and that ran from the extreme of the waste paper back at basket kind of searches that go on by news people in order to uncover secret documents you know all the way to know you may not do that that is not the way to conduct the assembly of news you must do it ethically well with questions sometimes put would you lie in order to get a new story and some said yes I think the media is going through

a kind of identity crisis I remember speaking with Bill tenor not too long after the Albuquerque Review yes and post this question to him it was look at the competition among members of the media and we're fairly deluged here at city hall with media representatives consider the radio stations and the TV stations and the two newspapers and they're crawling all over this plate they're competing with one another and the competition has become the more intense with TV gone are the days as Bill tenor of the old Cleveland press which was the influential paper in in Ohio and the editor was the known as the Kingmaker of the political organization within Ohio if you didn't get his endorsement in the Cleveland price you weren't elected those days are gone because people are now captivated through

news by TV TV is limited as to what it can provide in the way of information and it almost turns itself into disinformation because what kind of a story can you give in thirty seconds that becomes really meaningful and thoughtful do we have Kingmakers today can we have King makers today I think we can have Kingmakers I don't know I think the question is should we have Kingmakers today and I'm not prepared to answer that they served us well at one time you know yes yes I mean they may not have given us flawed kings but they gave us kings well and they gave us a kind of by unanimous consent elected officials that people generally supported but I think that all disappeared with the depression world war two and the appearance and the and the emergence of TV you have been pretty rough on the city council let's mind

that part of the Frank Klein Hans legend the necessary evil city council I know you know it's necessary yeah absolutely necessary 74 we went to a division of powers form a government executive legislative which we had not had before I joke about this sometimes it's necessary the city council is absolutely necessary as a legislative body I have appeal to the members of the council from time to time let's sit down and talk about our respective roles what what do you mean when you talk about making policy you are the policy makers but what does that mean to you as opposed to what the mayor is supposed to be doing as the executive executing policy where do you draw the line is it a straight line is it a crooked line because issues change do you get why do you get so deeply involved in administrative matters do you have imagined that you are the administration of the city we've got to define our respective

roles to make things more complicated in our governmental setting not only do you have a full-time mayor and a city council executive legislative you have in between a CAO who's the old city manager what's his function what do you expect him to do the charter is very general supervise and direct the operation of the city departments what does that mean to you in terms of day-to-day operation generation of policy presentation of policy we've never answered those questions you and Mayor Kinney have presided over the executive branch there's I can tell nearly seven out of the last eleven years it's great there have been some very distinguished citizens sit on the Albuquerque City Council I've often wondered though had there been other people take the reins of the new municipal form of government mayor council form of government other than Harry Kinney and Frank Klein hands what what do you think the

system would look like today because I think I see signatures on the executive branch born of you in mayor Kinney all right I'll speculate I think it would be we would be a far more parochial government today than we we are by parochial I mean a preoccupation with district matters this is my district and I want as much as I can get from my district this is what my constituents are saying we've structured an organization that causes all of us to focus not only on the on the interest of the district but also on citywide concerns not to the extent that I would like to see it happen because we have some major citywide issues that I think have been obscured as a result of some preoccupation with district matters that's one thing I think would have happened had Mayor Kinney and I not been around another thing that would have happened the city council in my opinion would have would have siphoned

off more and more power from the executive branch than what then has been the case despite the fact that some of the city councilors feel that I exercise too much power and I'm too dictatorial there's a reason for that that's a good balance against the tendency of the elected officials on the city council to do the same thing you teach public administration have taught public administration to a lot of folk over the years University of New Mexico I hope you teach at the University of Albuquer get teach when I was there last as I recall one of the essential axioms of public administration when I took it in college was the expert should be on tap not on top should be behind the scenes unseen out of sight out of mind going about their business now then I'm off I've often wanted to ask you this question what do you tell your students do as I say and not as I do I think that's probably that kind

of an axiom is probably right I think of what goes on in San Antonio today whoever heard of the city manager of San Antonio but everyone has heard of the mayor of the city of San Antonio in fact at this moment I can't even remember the name of the man of the city manager of San Antonio and he follows that axiom he's behind the scenes running the city and it's this narrows who's up front leading on the issues why hasn't that happened here I guess I ponder that very same question sometimes and I wish it had happened more here but I find myself in a position I don't seek that kind I don't seek that upfront kind of of exposure you just get really kind I'm a guy who likes to do desk work and do the detail work and be the technician yet there I am you ever propensity to give a good headline though well

that may be the ham in me I used to do some acting when I was in high school and it's probably from all of that even had my own TV programs some years ago thank you so much pleasure and thank you for joining us I'm Howe Roads good night and people who say I don't know what do you hear I don't know what do you hear I don't know