For a couple of days, it looked as though the University of South Florida would be punished because its president, Judy Genshaft, committed the rare (for her) and unpardonable (for Tallahassee) sin of saying something candid in public.
In the final days of Tallahassee's laborious budget negotiations, Genshaft indiscreetly admitted in response to a question from Senate President Jim King that USF could survive without an additional $20-million subsidy House Speaker Johnnie Byrd had earmarked for an Alzheimer's center at the university. Maybe Genshaft was thinking about the millions of dollars in cuts to core programs that USF would have to swallow while Byrd diverted money to his pet project. Maybe she was thinking about how Byrd had arranged things so that the Alzheimer's program would be controlled by his cronies, not by USF. Whatever the reason, Genshaft inadvertently blurted the truth.
Soon thereafter, USF learned that the House had excluded the school from a pilot program that could give Florida's top universities a more dependable funding base. Byrd professed to be stumped as to how USF had been replaced by Florida International University, but nothing happens in the House without Byrd's knowledge and approval.
In any case, Byrd responded to the public controversy by promising to arrange for USF to be reinstated into the pilot program. He invited himself to the USF Board of Trustees' next meeting and suggested he could make things right with a wave of his hand.
Say this much for Byrd: He generally has been a friend to USF, helping the university cope with the increasingly politicized competition for funding and status in Tallahassee. Boosters of Florida State University, who now reign supreme in Tallahassee, feel especially threatened by USF, which has become a bigger and more accomplished institution in many important respects. While Byrd was blamed for bouncing USF from the pilot funding program, this was not the first recent skulduggery that was intended to lower USF's stature and lift FSU's.
This also was hardly the first time our Tallahassee honorables have ignored the officials who are supposed to govern our universities. You may recall that Florida voters last November overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment re-establishing a state board to oversee the university system. But Gov. Jeb Bush, who abolished the original Board of Regents, and his legislative allies have chosen simply to ignore the will of the people. The resulting void has been filled by Bush, Byrd and other politicians who see our universities as little more than ripe targets for patronage and self-aggrandizement. In that environment, Genshaft and the dying breed of Florida university presidents who aren't former Tallahassee pols have to be especially careful about what they do and say. Such is the corrupt and backward environment Bush and the Legislature created when they destroyed the fragile structure that had given our state university system some protection from crass political meddling.
