Jamie Koch was confirmed Monday to the board of regents of The University of New Mexico, where he has served since 2003. To the extent that he had a hand in inflating the size of the school's administration, his critics among the UNM faculty had plenty of points to make with state senators voting on that confirmation. Koch, however, countered ...

As chairman of the UNM board for most of Gov. Bill Richardson's terms, Koch's hand was its usual strong self: He got rid of one Lobo prexy, the nationally eminent Louis Caldera — more recently of fighter-over-Manhattan fame and bounced as White House military adviser — and replaced him with David Schmidly. Oil and gas revenues were plentiful in the early years, and the school's administrative offices soon had fat dripping off the walls.

Some faculty representatives testifying before the Senate Rules Committee accused Schmidly, with Koch's encouragement, of running an imperial presidency, replete with 20 vice presidents.

But in terms of dedicated public service, their flanks, too, were a bit bare, as a regents' audit committee quickly discovered: Tenured and tenure-track teachers are supposed to carry a nine-hour-a-week (!) class load — yet one out of every six wasn't doing even that.

So when, early last year, half the faculty declared a lack of confidence in Koch, Schmidly and, for good measure, Vice President David Harris, the profs didn't inspire trumpets sounding revolution on their behalf.

Besides dogging it in terms of teaching, it turned out that at least a few were fudging salary records, while quite a few more were busier being outside consultants than inside instructors and counselors.

So it was a two-way blame game this week, with the Senate sitting in the bleachers. Most of them are Democrats — and Koch, who has helped raise campaign money for many of them and who has served as state party chairman, could be expected to score well with his partisans.

And he did, winning confirmation 31-5 — but he did even better with Republicans; all the elephants voting supported Koch; those opposing were Democrats.

Koch, a one-time footballer for UNM, must have made yardage with the GOP on past years' efforts to trim administrative and faculty expenses (we can just hear some of 'em mumbling about "commie profs"). And for all his lifelong partisanship and his tendency to bruise Republicans' feelings, they know Koch is a straight-shooter. Their votes must have confounded Koch's enemies among the professorial ranks.

Count on the Santa Fe businessman to press harder for top-to-bottom accountability at a UNM that was playing fast and loose, financially and academically, long before he became a regent. Yet to the extent that he was complicit in running up the public tab with overpaid executives, he's been making amends for the past year or so. No longer chairman, he's still holding Schmidly to higher financial standards.

Monday's vote, to Koch, was more than gratifying; he figures it rose above "playing politics." We're not buying that; he's a master of the game. He showed it during his testimony before the Senate Rules Committee when he declared that the vast majority of UNM employees abide by school rules "and are providing a tremendous service to our students and to the people of our state."

Barring new opportunities that might open under the next governorship, Jamie Koch is back on board for another five years. The school needs him.