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(Tenured Radical)

Saturday, January 15, 2005

ALL THE FLORIDA PAPERS WEIGH IN THIS MORNING.

LUCY NAILS IT.





' UNIVERSITY SYSTEM STILL A PRISONER OF POLITICS
By LUCY MORGAN, Times Tallahassee Bureau Chief
Published January 15, 2005

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We are deep in the woods now.

The next time someone tells you they are trying to get politics out of the state university system, go barf.

A few years ago we abolished the old Board of Regents that ran the state's 11 universities and created new boards of trustees at each university. Everyone was saying we did it to have more local control of the universities and less politics.

(The real reason it disappeared was because legislative leaders wanted a medical school at Florida State University and the Regents didn't. The Legislature abolished the Regents and voted for the medical school.)

Along came U.S. Sen. Bob Graham to push a Constitutional amendment that restored a statewide board to govern universities. Only we didn't get rid of the new boards of trustees.

We're getting the politics out of the universities, the Graham folks argued as they persuaded voters to approve the measure.

Okay, where are we?

The governor still appoints all of these people. Now he appoints not only the governing board but the individual trustees at each university. No politics here.

If you needed a poster child for politics in the university system, we now have it.

Last year legislators tucked a $9-million-a-year perpetual appropriation into the budget for a new chiropractic school at FSU. The university didn't ask for a chiropractic school and it would appear a great many academics and doctors at FSU don't want it under any circumstance.

But former Senate President Jim King, one of FSU's best-known boosters, wanted the school for his friend, Sen. Dennis Jones, R-Treasure Island, who happens to be a chiropractor and an FSU grad.

Enter the new Board of Governors, a bit miffed that FSU and its board of trustees would proceed with a chiropractic school without consulting the folks who govern all universities.

The cart was clearly before the horse here. And the FSU Board of Trustees, chaired by former House Speaker John Thrasher, was clearly in the middle of the fight.

Thrasher and former Secretary of State Jim Smith, both on the FSU board, lobby for a living, depending on the Legislature to butter their bread. On the Board of Governors sits yet another lobbyist, Steve Uhlfelder.

Enter Senate President Tom Lee, who sees this swamp and decides having lobbyists sit on these university boards is a very bad idea.

Lobbyists usually bend over backward to keep legislators happy. University trustees shouldn't have to.

If we didn't have enough politics swirling in the academic air by this time, consider what happened next.

Uhlfelder picks up the phone in a rage and unloads on Lee, suggesting that he will use the Senate president's own fundraising to embarrass him if he doesn't drop his opposition to lobbyists on the boards.

Uhlfelder has since apologized but he may have just had the most expensive temper tantrum in town. Big corporations that hire lobbyists don't like it when the guy they are depending on has angered a Senate president.

We didn't have enough politics in this situation. Next the governor starts calling around to the FSU trustees. He even calls Thrasher out of the meeting in the midst of the heated chiropractic debate.

He was just congratulating me for having the new medical school named after me, Thrasher insisted later. Yeah. Sure.

The trustees decide to punt. Instead of deciding whether FSU should have a chiropractic school, they kick it to the board of governors for a vote this month.

That way the lobbyists on the FSU board don't have to make enemies in the Legislature.

There can't be a better demonstration of the problem.

If the Senate president doesn't want lobbyists on those boards, the odds are pretty high that will happen, one way or another. Lee is reviewing the possibilities of changing the law, but he also has a trump card.

Uhlfelder's term on the board of governors expired Jan. 6. Guess who has to be reappointed and confirmed by the Senate?

"I would not confirm his appointment," Lee said Friday.

Pretty clear to me.
'