Public university presidents in Iowa could become a thing of the past if a proposal from one legislator finds support in the Iowa General Assembly.

A bill, proposed by Rep. Joe Hutter, R-Bettendorf, would eliminate the positions of individual regent university presidents and consolidate them under an executive director, who would have direct administrative authority over all three universities.

Hutter said the bill would not likely get through committee in time to be passed this session, but he will continue pursuing it in the next legislative session.

The goal is to save administrative costs at the universities, keeping tuition lower for students and helping retain faculty, Hutter said.

“My thought process is we only have one governor for the state, so we could probably have one leader for the three universities,” he said.

Hutter said cutting the positions of university presidents and related administrative costs could save the state about $1 million. Hutter said he envisions something similar to the University of Illinois, which has three campuses governed by one president.

Both the Iowa Board of Regents office and ISU officials oppose the bill.

“So many things are wrong with [the bill] — I don’t know where to start,” said Assistant to the President and Director of Government Relations Gary Steinke. “What that pre-supposes is that it isn’t a full-time job to run [a university] … [ISU] President [Gregory] Geoffroy spends 16 hours a day and sometimes more — I don’t know how it would be possible for one person to do all three.”

Questions remain about the benefit of the merger, said Board of Regents Communication Specialist Barbara Boose.

“It seems that it would actually create bureaucracy,” Boose said. “Given the geographic distance among the three universities, there would have to be some sort of chief executive at each university, even if there was this primary leader.”

Hutter said deans could run the day-to-day operation of the universities.

Boose said the primary concern the board office has with the bill is that it fails to recognize the individual characters of the three universities.

“The three universities have great differences,” she said. “To combine them all under one chief executive seems to diminish that.”

The bill was introduced last month and is currently in subcommittee. Thursday is the deadline for all legislative bills to be out of committee.

Kathy Hanlon, senior research analyst for the Legislative Services Agency, said there are no more committee meetings scheduled for this week, meaning unless the provisions are tacked onto another bill, the bill will likely not make it through the Legislature this year.

Hutter said he spent time collecting input from students and those connected with higher education before the next legislative session.

“I’m not saying it’s the right answer, but I think we need to think of other things than raising tuition or cutting things,” he said.