Fired higher education administrators who keep getting hired

I have been a professor at a mid-sized public comprehensive for 26 years and have noticed, increasingly, that when a bad administrator is fired from one institution they very frequently get hired immediately at another institution.

For example, we had a dean of education who had no experience working as a faculty member, a chair, or any other position in academia prior to becoming dean. (Yes, he had a personal connection in administration at this institution.) He had no idea how a university works and no idea how to do his job. In any case he was removed after 4 years of increasing apathy and chaos in the college. He immediately became a finalist at another institution in the state, for a dean of education position, and I learned that he had listed the president of my institution as his first reference. He did not get that job, but a few weeks later he was hired as a dean of education at a large (mostly online) university on the west coast. I feel sure he got a glowing recommendation by the very person who signed off on his firing from the deanship here.

Another of our deans (business) was hired externally after a national search, lasted 2 years, and was removed from the position at the end of an academic year for lack of competence, dissatisfaction of faculty, and generally poor performance across the board. He was hired by another institution out of state so quickly that he never had to join the teaching faculty here at the beginning of the academic year. I wonder if the president offered to be a professional reference for him...

Another example is that the president of a small private college in this state was fired by the board for (at least in large part) inappropriate communications with and about young female students. He immediately got another president position at another small private college, and a year or two later was selected in a national search for a dean position at a regional public university in the same state where he had been fired. At the time of his earlier firing, not one single news story was released about the nature of his removal from the first president role in which he served and the institution hiring him was most likely completely unaware of those circumstances since few people outside of the institution's board of curators were aware of the context of his firing (and the board was bound by confidentiality). Obviously the institution that fired him from the presidency did not want anyone to know about WHY he was removed.

I am wondering how common this is. Is it like football coaches at the college and pro levels who have a losing season(s), get fired, and immediately get hired by another team? Is it illegal to ask why an administrator left his/her previous position (especially if it was in the middle of an academic year...)? Is there any way for search committees or search firms to actually vet these individuals in ethical and legal ways? It seems like the bad apples keep bobbing to the top. Interested to hear the experiences of others. I know deans can be removed by provosts and provosts can be removed by presidents for reasons that are not performance-related but is there no way to discern if the removal was due to poor performance?