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FAMU law school site is a deal waiting to happen© St. Petersburg Times, published September 16, 2000 It's time to play Let's Make a Deal. On the table for our deal is a brand, spanking new law school for Florida A & M University. It's a sensitive deal. For years, the state's black legislators have viewed the proposed law school as an entitlement for a historically black university that was stripped of its law school by white legislators who turned around and gave it to Florida State University. Last spring -- in a frenzied round of deal making that is typical for the Legislature -- FAMU got approval for a new law school. Florida International University got one, too. It was all part of a deal cooked up a few years back when Hispanic legislators agreed to trade their support for a FAMU law school for the support of black legislators for a law school at FIU. Two new law schools! Such a deal. Floridians need more lawyers like we all need holes in our heads. But this is what lawmaking is all about. Senate President Toni Jennings announced the deal at the end of the legislative session, proudly noting she had traded approval of a medical school at Florida State for the two new law schools, one of which would be located along the Interstate 4 corridor. So now we turn to word of yet another deal. All the buzz in Tallahassee this week surrounds what will happen next in the FAMU law school soap opera. Last week, a site selection committee recommended putting the law school in Orlando. That didn't sit too well with the folks over in Tampa who want it, too. Earlier this week, University Chancellor Adam Herbert said he was delaying consideration of the site. The state Board of Regents was supposed to consider the issue this week, but Herbert wants to wait until November. By then, we'll know who the next president of the Florida Senate will be. At the moment, it appears that Sen. John McKay, R-Bradenton, will get the job. McKay wants the law school to be located in Tampa, but says he hasn't made a deal to put it there. McKay says he believes the school should be where it would serve the most minorities and get the best funding. McKay also would like the site selection process to be fair, and doubts the process thus far has met that particular criteria. So the rumored deal started making the rounds as a new education commission started considering a proposal to abolish the Board of Regents, the board that governs universities. Have Herbert and the regents made a deal with McKay to save themselves from annihilation? No, says McKay. No, say the regents and Herbert, indignantly. But everyone who has watched legislative dealmaking in the past is a little suspicious. As Senate president, McKay could clearly derail a move to abolish the regents. He might have to do it over the dead body of House Speaker-to-be Tom Feeney, who is from the Orlando area. But that, too, could be accomplished if there is something Feeney really wants. Herbert and the regents could approve a Tampa site for the law school. But that would never happen in Florida. We don't make decisions based on where legislators live, do we? Forget the path of Interstate 75. Ignore the fact that it got built through Wildwood, home to a State Road Board chairman and a past speaker of the House. Forget the Southwest Florida Water Management District. Ignore the fact that it was put in Brooksville, home of Alfred McKethan, powerful politician of the past. Forget that new medical school going in at Florida State. Ignore the fact that House Speaker John Thrasher is an FSU alumnus. We don't do things that way in Florida. Do we? Keep a sharp eye on this ball. The deal making is definitely not over.
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