TALLAHASSEE -- Amid a clamor to overhaul a state university system lawmakers say isn’t cutting it, Sen. John Thrasher wants to ban lawmakers from holding jobs with public colleges and universities they fund.

Given past scandal, Thrasher said it’s best to eliminate the “conflict of interest.”

But Thrasher is the same lawmaker who, as house speaker in 2000, helped secure a new medical school at Florida State University that higher education officials resisted. Then he helped eliminate the state board that opposed it.

In a speech opening the legislative session, House Speaker Dean Cannon said Florida’s public university system is “racing toward the middle,” a hodgepodge of schools with no clear mission and overlapping agendas.

And he put part of the blame on lawmakers.

“We, as a Legislature, and I freely include myself in this critique, have contributed to the problem by parochially advancing the interests of our local university or college at the expense of the system as a whole,” Cannon, R-Winter Park, said.

He echoed recent demands by Gov. Rick Scott that universities must prove their value to the state’s economic bottom line.

Starting with several bills this session to create bigger change later, Senate President-designate Don Gaetz promises a revolutionary effort when he takes over as the next Senate president that will “lash” the state’s primary and higher education systems to its economic needs.

But deeply vested interests, at universities and in the House and Senate, are among the most formidable walls to significant overhauls.

“The alumni and the members of the Legislature that come from different regions are always anxious to advocate for their university,” said H. Lee Moffitt, House speaker in 1982-84. “That’s normal, and that part of the process is never going to go away.”

Higher education has long been thorny in Tallahassee.

Over the past decade, the boards running public universities have been broken and recreated. Powerful lawmakers slip themselves into decisions about campuses in their districts or at their alma matters, if not onto schools’ payrolls.

Most recently, Senate Budget Committee Chairman JD Alexander has been criticized for pushing the University of South Florida’s Lakeland campus toward independence — a move that was opposed by students, faculty and USF administrators before the Board of Governors managing the state’s higher education system voted to delay it. The campus is in his home Polk County.

Then there’s the paychecks.

In 2008 former Speaker Ray Sansom landed in trouble by taking a job with Northwest Florida College after helping dole out millions to the school. That year, a Times review found 18 current or recently retired lawmakers who worked in the higher education system — two-thirds sponsoring bills or serving on committees overseeing college budgets. Today, Senate President Mike Haridopolos has a teaching job with the University of Florida, among other lawmakers on school payrolls.

The oversight of the state’s 11 public universities also has been contentious.

As speaker Thrasher helped abolish the Board of Regents, which had more direct oversight of the system. It was replaced with a Board of Governors and each university then created their own board of trustees.