BATON ROUGE – A heavily amended Senate bill that would limit the public release of information on who is a candidate for high-profile university positions and also shield the identity of university donors advanced through a House committee Tuesday.

As amended, Senate Bill 289, authored by Sen. Mark Abraham, R-Lake Charles and unanimously approved by the Committee on House and Governmental Affairs, would require state universities to release the names of three finalists in searches for new presidents and other top jobs.

Abraham’s original bill would have allowed for the process to be kept entirely confidential. His bill was a response to concerns that qualified applicants who hold an executive position elsewhere might be discouraged from applying if their names were made public.

The bill stalled in a House and Governmental Affairs Hearing last Thursday after members expressed concerns about the protection of donor names and “dark money.”

Under the original bill, the names of donors would have been kept private unless written consent for identification was given. The amended bill creates an exemption for the names of donors to public colleges if they ask to keep their names hidden.

“As an ethics body, we don’t want the people to be in the dark,” said Rep. Ed Larvadain, D-Alexandria.

With assistance from Scott Sternberg, an attorney specializing in First Amendment litigation, Abraham’s bill was altered so that donor records would become public by default unless specifically requested otherwise by the donor.

“The bill only exempts their identity, that's important, because someone with an agenda can come in and say, ‘I'm going to donate $5 million, but only if you advocate for X,” Sternberg said. “That's what we were trying to make sure didn't happen, and I'm comfortable with the language now.”

The bill also added protections for university research and trade negotiations, creating a waiting period for disclosure of industry negotiations within the university, as well as protections of grant applications and research from public record.

An additional amendment, presented as a whistleblower protection, was added to the bill. The exemption would protect the identity of those reporting student code-of-conduct violations.

The Senate bill will now advance to the House floor.

A bill also focused on universities, by Rep. Chuck Owen, R-Rosepine, faced amendments to water down the language before it advanced from the House floor in a 103-0 vote on Monday.

House Bill 1008 aims to create freedom-of-speech protections for university faculty members.

Created to protect against punishment or retaliation against staff members on personal statements made or topics discussed, the bill was amended considerably before advancing from the House.

The bill would protect faculty members when their conduct is “consistent with applicable present law” and does not involve threatening, demeaning or intimidating “language or conduct.”

Lawmakers deleted a part of Owen’s bill under which universities might have had to pay faculty members for significant violations of their free-speech rights.

Owen noted that the bill, which now moves to the Senate, is not focused on protecting a specific political perspective.

“I would like to send a clear signal that in the state of Louisiana, we value academic freedom,” Owen said. “We value the time that our professors, our adjunct faculty, our assistant professors put in, and we want them to be able to speak freely in their classes.”