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A foolish higher education plan afoot in Legislature

By Howard Troxler, Times Columnist
Published March 6, 2008

There is a simply horrible attempt afoot in our state Legislature to hijack control of Florida's state university system - yet again.

Our state Senate wants to overturn the decision of the voters in 2002, and put the Board of Governors back under the control of the Legislature.

On top of that, the Legislature wants to tack on an entirely separate idea - going back to an elected state education commissioner.

The voters would get the final say in November, because this is a change to our state Constitution. But it's not fair to put two entirely different things into the same vote.

This is just a flat-out foolish way to run a state.

Angry at being defied by the universities in the 1990s, the Legislature grabbed control by simply abolishing the old Board of Regents.

In a strong rebuke to the Legislature, in 2002 the voters - via a citizen petition drive - created the independent Board of Governors.

Yet the Legislature has not stopped meddling (remember that chiropractic school it wanted at Florida State?), insisting that it still has the power to control tuition.

But this measure in question - Senate Joint Resolution 2308 - does a lot more than settle the tuition fight.

It abolishes the existing, 17-member board. It replaces the board with five members, named by the governor and approved by the Senate.

The board that we have now, according to the 2002 amendment passed by voters, is "fully responsible" for running the university system. It has sole power to operate, regulate and control the schools.

In contrast, SJR 2308 says that the new five-member board would merely "administer" the university system "as provided by law" - in other words, as the Legislature says.

The second big change in SJR 2308 would reverse another voter decision and go back to an elected education commissioner.

I tend to agree with former Gov. Jeb Bush that this is a bad idea. But the main point is, it ought to be an entirely separate issue.

If the people of Florida try to amend their Constitution, they are required to stick to a "single subject." But the Legislature gets to play by its own rules.

You might ask: How is it even possible that the Legislature would consider this?

Here's how. Up in Tallahassee, some lawmakers have convinced themselves that THEY are the good guys in this fight. They are not.

They think of themselves as "the people's Legislature" and of the Board of Governors as some sort of interloper, a mere "unelected board."

Never mind that the people of Florida created the Board of Governors, deliberately, as an independent, nonpolitical state university system.

SJR 2308 passed its first committee vote in the Senate on Wednesday on a unanimous vote, after the members beat up the university system chancellor a while. (See the related story in today's paper.)

If you decide to contact your legislators on this issue, you can find all their phone numbers and e-mail addresses on the Legislature's Web site, www.leg.state.fl.us, or in your telephone directory.

Is this what our state stands for? Schools of chiropractic and skull-reading, at the Legislature's whim? State senators on university payrolls? Rock-bottom higher ed, with the worst teacher-student ratio in the nation?

Yeeeeeeeeeeeee-hah!

[Last modified March 5, 2008, 23:18:58]