MOHELA bill sent to House committee
Published May 1, 2007
Gov. Matt Blunt's plan to fund higher education with the sale of assets from Missouri's student loan authority is slated to enter the House of Representatives' Higher Education Committee this week after passage last Wednesday in the Senate.
The bill is a controversial piece of legislation that has seen deliberation spanning nearly two full legislative sessions, weathered two filibusters from Democrats in the Senate and experienced a slew of provisional changes.
The bill, coined the Lewis and Clark Discovery Initiative by Blunt, would provide funds for capital improvement projects and scholarships at public colleges and universities in the state through the sale of assets from the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority.
As the bill now stands, MU will not directly receive any funding from the bill.
Several members of the House said the bill might be voted upon as early as this week.
Todd Scott, spokesman for Sen. Matt Bartle, R-Lee's Summit, said Bartle rejected the measure because he felt as if some of the bill's proposed capital improvement projects for Missouri's campuses weren't appropriate expenses to be funded by the state.
"He didn't feel it was the best way to use the state's funding," Scott said.
Bartle cast the only Republican vote against the measure in the Senate, which passed 23-11.
Rep. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, said she has not yet studied the bill in detail, but she predicts she will support it, judging from the information she does have.
"I've been assured it will be fine," Cunningham said.
Rep. David Pearce, R-Warrensburg, vice chairman of the House Higher Education Committee, said he was unable to comment about his support for the bill, citing "problems" with provisions within the measure regarding caps on tuition rates.
"It's not a perfect bill," Pearce said.
Rep. Carl Bearden, R-St. Charles, who also serves on the Higher Education Committee, said the stipulations regarding tuition caps have been misrepresented, but the bill as it stands now is something he is "going to work on and protect."
"The program we have now is a very comprehensive program," Bearden said.
Bearden said that though the bill wouldn't prevent tuition raises, the state could intervene to prevent Missouri colleges and universities from raising rates above the consumer price index.
He said he doesn't anticipate any major changes to the bill when it enters the House.
"I think that people use the fact that it has changed so much over time as a negative," Bearden said. "I would like to see no change and send this to the governor's desk."
Provisions made to provide $31 million to MU for the Ellis Fischel Cancer Center and $15 million to UM-Kansas City for a pharmacy and a nursing building were stripped from the bill before its passage in the Senate.
Sen. Chuck Graham, D-Columbia, and Sen. Jolie Justus, D-Kansas City, supported the building projects and saw their provisions removed in response to a Graham filibuster before the bill came to its final vote.
Rep. Rebecca McClanahan, D-Kirksville, who serves on the House Higher Education Committee, said she is apprehensive about the removal of the capital improvement projects.
"I'm very concerned about those cuts," McClanahan said. "I think we're playing politics with our institutions of higher learning. Just penalizing two of our senators by taking projects off their lists is just ridiculous. It appears to be just partisan vindictiveness."
House Minority Leader Jeff Harris, D-Columbia, said he and many other Democrats oppose the bill.
"The governor's own financial advisers said not to sell these assets," Harris said. "He's just not taking the advice of his own experts."
Harris said the bill is harming and "potentially bankrupting" Missouri students. He said he is against the bill, and he would continue to oppose it as long as it involves the sale of MOHELA assets.
McClanahan said passage of the bill would give universities no reason not to raise tuition rates and said more money should be made available to "invest in students and young minds."
Otto Fajen, legislative director for Missouri National Education Association, a public education advocacy group, said his organization opposes the sale of private MOHELA assets because more funding for higher education should come from the state budget.
"We'd rather see the state be sensible about taxation," Fajen said. "That would allow them to make the necessary investments ... to move Missouri forward."
Fajen compared the bill to finance company J.G. Wentworth, whose commercials promise customers "cash now" for annuities and structured settlements.
He said the bill would "sacrifice long-term support for something with a short-term nature."
"If you pass it, it sets a precedent for that kind of short-term thinking," he said.
Fajen said MNEA is not against the capital improvement projects included in the bill, and he was surprised that building projects at MU and UMKC had been removed from the bill. He criticized the Senate Republicans' amendment that removed them.
"That's not even high school in maturity," Fajen said. "That's junior high, at best."