LARAMIE (WNE) — The Legislature’s Management Council voted last week to postpone a study of the University of Wyoming’s governance structure until at least 2021.

In February, the House and Senate voted to have the Legislative Service Office hire a “third party consultant” to examine UW’s governance structure and compare it to the “best practices of other land grant universities’ governance structures that could be adopted to maximize efficient operations.”

The study was proposed amid legislators expressing concerns about UW’s leadership; however, the Legislature did not assign funding in the winter for the study.

“I think, at the time, it may have been the idea to allow the LSO to use its flex authority to hire a consultant to conduct this governance study,” LSO director Matt Obrecht said last week. “We don’t have the flexibility in the budget that we did in March.”

With the COVID-19 pandemic and depressed oil prices taking a toll on state revenues, the Management Council voted last week to delay hiring a consultant for the study until the Legislature appropriates funds for the study.

Legislators said the study could proceed in 2021 if legislators approve funding in the 2021 supplemental budget session.

The vote for a governance study came in February as a last-minute amendment to the state’s budget bill, with the proposal’s backers expressing a vague lack of confidence in UW’s leadership, especially in the wake of former President Laurie Nichols’s 2019 ouster.