Voters Approve Florida Governance Shift, Major Bond Measures in
California and Virginia
By SARA HEBEL and PETER SCHMIDT
Florida voters agreed last week to set up a new governing board for the state's public
universities, in defiance of many lawmakers there, while Californians and Virginians
voted to let their states borrow large sums of money to finance college construction.
A total of 15 states voted on referendums directly affecting higher education. Also among
them were Michigan, where voters overwhelmingly rejected a measure that would have
cut the state's merit-based scholarship program off from a key source of funds, and
Tennessee, where a solid majority of voters agreed to let lawmakers establish a lottery to
finance college scholarships and other education-related needs.
The Florida governance measure, approved by just over 60 percent of voters there,
amends the state's Constitution to establish a new public-university governing board
much like the one that Gov. Jeb Bush, a Republican, and the state's Republicandominated Legislature abolished two years ago. Governor Bush had opposed the
measure, but had not campaigned heavily against it, focusing instead on his own
(successful) bid to win re-election.
The governance structure that had been put in place over the past two years had entrusted
each of the public universities to its own gubernatorially appointed Board of Trustees. It
left questions related to state higher-education policy to a state board that oversees all
sectors of education, from preschool on up. That board will remain in place, but, as a
result of last week's vote, it will have little authority over public universities.
The campaign on behalf of the amendment had been mounted by Sen. Bob Graham, a
Democrat and former two-term Florida governor. He had strongly opposed the
Legislature's recent reorganization of university governance, and had argued that the state
would suffer without the presence of some panel to oversee public universities and
coordinate their efforts.
The amendment's passage "is definitely a good thing for higher education," said Joan D.
Ruffier, the chairwoman of Education Excellence for Florida, the organization that
Senator Graham pulled together to lead the campaign.
"Instead of competing against each other and building mediocrity in the higher-education
system," Ms. Ruffier said, "the universities can build depth and programs of distinction
that compete against their peers nationally."
The amendment adopted last week will place the public universities under a 17-member
Board of Governors that, being enshrined in the state Constitution, will have much more
power and independence than the board that lawmakers had abolished. The institutions
will retain their own Boards of Trustees, but those panels will have only those powers
that the Board of Governors delegates to them.
Several universities' boards had opposed Senator Graham's proposal, as had the
associations representing the presidents of the state's public universities and community
colleges. Many public-university officials argued that their institutions were thriving
under the governance system established under Governor Bush, because having their own
Boards of Trustees gave them much more flexibility.
In response to last week's vote, Talbot D'Alemberte, president of Florida State University,
said that he did not expect the passage of Amendment 11 to have much impact on his
institution or how it is run. "Ultimately, I believe that a number of different types of
governance will work, so long as you have good people," he said.
The Constitutional amendment had been strongly supported by the state's teachers union,
the Florida Education Association. It had watched its college affiliate, the 3,200-member
United Faculty of Florida, lose its right to represent public-university faculty members
throughout the state in collective bargaining when the former Board of Regents was
abolished and power over faculty contracts was handed over to each university's Board of
Trustees.
Other Races Attract Attention
The debate over the amendment had largely been overshadowed by two other political
contests: the race for governor, which pitted Mr. Bush against Bill McBride, a Democrat,
and by the debate over another proposed constitutional amendment, calling for limits on
class sizes in elementary and secondary schools. Many college presidents had issued
statements opposing the class-size measure, arguing that it would draw money away from
higher education as the state scrambled to provide districts with new classrooms and
teachers. Governor Bush also opposed the class-size amendment, but it passed
nonetheless.
The university-governance amendment takes effect in January. At that point, Governor
Bush will need to make his appointments to the new Board of Governors and the
reconstituted university Boards of Trustees. The state Legislature will have to devote part
of its 2003 session to revising a host of laws that deal with university governance, to
bring them into line with the newly amended Constitution.
In elections elsewhere, voters in California and Virginia paved the way for their states to
finance hundreds of millions of dollars in college construction projects, by approving
statewide bond measures.
The California measure, known as Proposition 47, passed comfortably, with almost 59
percent of voters approving it. It will provide $1.65-billion for campus projects, including
$496-million at the California State University System, $408-million at the University of
California system, and $746-million at the state's community colleges. The legislation
that put this year's referendum on the ballot also authorized placing an additional $2.3billion in higher-education bonds on the state's 2004 ballot. If voters also approve the
bonds in 2004, the two measures combined would be the largest bond package in the
history of higher education, eclipsing the $3.1-billion of college projects that North
Carolina voters approved two years ago.
Virginia voters endorsed $846-million for campus facilities by a wide margin, with 72
percent of voters approving the measure, which also includes almost $55-million for
museums.
Brian Cannon, chairman of the Students of William and Mary Political Action
Committee, said that he and other supporters of the Virginia bonds were pleasantly
"shocked" by how many voters turned out to approve the measure. The nonpartisan
student group, which formed in May, raised more than $17,000 to pay for radio
advertising that urged support for the higher-education bonds and for other campaign
activities, such as holding voter-registration drives at the College of William and Mary.
"We view this as a mandate. It shows that Virginians want higher education funded at
better levels than they are funded now," said Mr. Cannon, a junior who is majoring in
government. On Election Day last week, he and about 40 student volunteers campaigned
at voting sites and drove fellow students to the polls.
Advocates for the bonds in both states had argued that institutions desperately need the
projects to make room for a growing number of students, update technology, and catch up
on a backlog of repairs so that buildings could meet fire codes, be more accessible to
students with disabilities, and, in California, better withstand earthquakes.
Supporters, though, had been concerned that voters might worry whether the states could
afford to take on large amounts of debt during tough economic times. California is
confronting a $24-billion budget deficit, and Virginia faces a $1.5-billion shortfall in
revenues over the next two years.
In California, some lawmakers and taxpayer groups had urged voters to reject the
referendum, which also included $11.35-billion for construction at public elementary and
secondary schools, saying that obligating the state to pay those bonds would be unwise
financially.
Supporters of the measures had countered that now is the best time for the state to issue
bonds because interest rates are low, which makes it cheaper for the state to pay them
back. They also argued that the bonds could spur economic development by creating
thousands of construction jobs and improving university facilities that support the work
of researchers.
Elsewhere, Alaska, New Mexico, and Oregon also approved bond measures to finance
college construction and other needs. Hawaii amended its Constitution to allow the state
to issue special-purpose-revenue bonds to finance projects at private colleges and
schools. The state had previously allowed the sale of such bonds only for public
educational entities.
Merit Aid Protected
More than two-thirds of Michigan voters rejected a measure that would have deprived the
state's merit-based college-scholarship program of its sole source of revenue: funds
derived from the state's legal settlement with the nation's tobacco companies.
The measure would have required that 90 percent of the approximately $300-million
annual payment from the state to the tobacco companies be spent on hospitals, nursing
homes, and other health-related needs. Currently, about 75 percent of such dollars go into
the Michigan Merit Award Trust Fund, which awards $2,500 college scholarships to
high-school students who perform exceptionally well on a state-administered
standardized test.
The referendum's passage would not have had any effect on the more than 137,000
students who have received such awards since the scholarship program's inception, in
2000. But it might have resulted in the denial of promised scholarship funds to 58,000
students who are scheduled to enter college next year, and an additional 20,000 who have
deferred spending all or part of their awards, if state lawmakers were unable to come up
with a new source of scholarship funds.
The campaign on behalf of the measure spent more than $4-million -- about four times as
much as the other side -- with much of the money coming from hospitals and other
health-care providers or advocates. It argued that the tobacco money would be better
spent on health care and that the majority of students who receive Michigan's merit-based
scholarships come from financially well-off families and do not need state aid.
Among the opponents of the measure were various organizations representing the state's
college presidents, as well as teachers unions and several prominent current and former
state officials, including Gov. John Engler, a Republican. They argued that the measure
would have devastated the Michigan Merit Award program and wreaked havoc on the
state's already tight budget, by obligating lawmakers to spend money on health-related
programs that had not been receiving funds before.
Tennesseans overwhelmingly adopted an amendment to the state Constitution that clears
the way for lawmakers to create a state lottery, with some of the resulting revenue to be
earmarked for financial aid for college students. The measure was supported by many
education leaders, but opposed by the Tennessee Baptist Convention and other churchaffiliated groups.
In Arizona and Idaho, voters approved measures to require that a certain percentage of
American Indian gambling income go toward education programs. Between 1 percent
and 8 percent of gambling revenues in Arizona will now go to the state for education and
other activities, and tribes in Idaho will have to contribute 5 percent of their annual net
gambling income to colleges and schools near Indian reservations. Arizona voters,
however, defeated two other measures that would have authorized more gambling
venues, including casinos and slot machines on tribal land, and directed some of the
profits to higher education.
http://chronicle.com
Section: Government & Politics
Volume 49, Issue 12, Page A26