DEAR EDITOR:

Just read their books, Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” and Johnson’s “Raising Fathers” … identical political journeys while both chased, but apparently never resolved, existential answers to their respective traumatic childhoods. But another time for that.

For the present, let’s just focus on YSU President Pro-Tem’s reluctance to speak to a prearranged open forum as to how he and the board of “trustees” came up with his name to be vetted for the position.

After six months on the job, seldom does a week go by that yet another issue surfaces, making us scratch our heads as to how Johnson got the job. On July 21, David Skolnick of The Vindicator reported when Johnson left his lackluster career in the U.S. congressional swamp, he transferred monies from his principal campaign committee — $873,721,000 — to the hastily organized Ohio Belief Political Action Committee on June 28. A couple of days later, this fund was closed and the monies transferred to Johnson’s leadership PAC, one organized in May 2013 and aptly named the “Belief in Life and Liberty” PAC — affectionately known as Bill’s PAC. Get the play on words?

Anyway, Johnson gets to Youngstown and YSU via his Trojan horse and is secretly vetted, nominated and hired to be this institution of higher learning’s 10th president. But then something went wrong. No one, save the highly secretive board of “trustees,” knew how all of this went down. And to this day we still don’t, despite numerous requests to clear the air of deception.

So here you have Johnson, with no background whatsoever in higher education leadership, leaving a yearly salary of $174k, PLUS all the perks that D.C. position afforded, then getting hired at YSU for a whopping three-year contract exceeding $1 million! Then, of course, there are the many lucrative benefits associated with this position — and all free — like housing, transportation, etc.

But it didn’t stop there. Once arriving on campus, Johnson opens the Trojan horse and hires three assistant interns to help with an obviously overwhelming transition. This sleight-of-hand cost students and their families another $319,360 per annum. Over the course of Johnson’s three-year hopefully nonrenewable contract, these four implants will cost YSU a whopping $1,549,360! That’s right, over $1.5 million — an unconscionable amount of money for what little they bring to the table.

And this is but a partial explanation as to why Johnson and his sidekick, board chair Peterson, won’t sit for the long overdue conversation. Guess we may never know the rest of the story. But maybe not, more to follow.

TERRY B. CROGAN

Boardma