Looks like the fix is in for Florida Legislature’s university power grab. It shouldn’t be | Editorial

Who’s running Florida’s universities?

Clearly, it’s not the State University System (SUS) chancellor and Board of Governors. And it’s not the presidents and Boards of Trustees of the supposedly preeminent University of Florida (UF) and Florida State University (FSU), all of whom were blindsided, bushwhacked, sucker-punched and generally made to look like eunuchs last week by State Rep. Randy Fine, R-Palm Bay.

After business, out of nowhere, at the near-halfway mark of the legislative session, Fine dropped PCB EDC 20-03 into the unwholesome bouillabaisse of budget negotiations between the House and Senate.

Fine proposes to pick up “all property, revenue, existing contracts, existing funds,” along with students, faculty and staff, from New College in Sarasota and dump it into FSU’s lap. Fine also means to sign over the assets and liabilities of Lakeland-based Florida Polytechnic University, lock, stock and barrel, to UF.

At the moment, there is no Senate companion bill, but the fix is clearly in at the highest level of the House. In only two days, Fine’s bill was heard and passed by the House Education Committee.

Fine is a Harvard graduate who made his fortune as an executive in the casino-gambling industry, where human beings exist only to be separated from their money, and the house always wins. No wonder he sees universities as just another commodity for the mergers and acquisitions industry, like drug stores, hospitals and fast-food chains.

To be fair, both House Speaker José Oliva and Fine had previously signaled that a major scholarship bill was in the works and would be aimed at attaching more strings to state subsidies for students’ education. PBC EDC 20-03 does that. However, there is no principled reason to link a conversation about financing scholarships to lobbing a grenade onto the campuses of four of Florida’s 12 state universities.

Fine’s bill makes a lot more sense as a bargaining chip in the always-messy budget negotiations between the House and Senate. Last week, Oliva and Senate President Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, were about $1.4 billion apart in their proposed spending plans. The budget must be balanced before lawmakers can go home and get rolling on getting themselves reelected, and as the two chambers begin their annual high-stakes budget poker game, Galvano, whose district includes New College, is “open to having a discussion.”

This sorry spectacle is just the latest chapter in the Legislature’s long, sordid history of playing political games with state universities to the detriment of students who just want to learn and professors who just want to teach.

This story was originally published February 19, 2020 at 4:06 PM.