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| 7/29/2010 2:06:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article | Mo. auditor
states UCM
shortchanged
Jefferson City - State lawmakers got their fingers into higher education's funding pie and some pulled out financial plums with "little input" from the Missouri Department of Higher Education, State Auditor Susan Montee said Wednesday.
Meddling affected the University of Central Missouri, she said, but Senate Education Committee Chairman David Pearce is not so sure.
"The Morrow-Garrison building is one that is on the 'recommended' priority list, and so it did get included, but with no explanation at all they shorted them $3.4 million that they needed for the project," Montee told The Star-Journal. "The recommended funding was $16.6 million and when it was all said and done, they only gave them $13.2 million. And there were a couple of other projects (at UCM) that were actually given more money than they would have gotten under the regular recommendation. We don't know what the explanation is for that."
Pearce said he had not seen the audit, but does not recall UCM being treated unfairly in the budget process.
"Believe me, if Central had been treated unfairly, or I thought we were getting the short end of the stick, I would have been fighting for it," Pearce said.
UCM spokesman Jeff Murphy said the Coordinating Board of Higher Education pared the university's original $18,621,905 request to $16,621,905, with a private gift of $2 million coming from UCM. The university received $13,229,000, he said.
"We're not sure why they chose that particular amount. We're very grateful to the state for what we did receive, though," Murphy said.
Lawmakers heed Department of Higher Education funding priorities, Pearce said.
"That is something that at times is changed, but that is pretty much what the House Budget and Senate Appropriations (committees) end up going with," he said.
Some schools got money for projects they did not request at the expense of other schools that asked but did not get funds, Montee said.
"These projects got added because specific individuals and lobbying groups were trying to get certain projects put in," Montee said.
Pearce said the Department of Higher Education can make recommendations, but lawmakers make decisions.
"The legislature always has the ability to prioritize things and about the only way we can do that is through the budgetary process," he said.
Montee issued two audits Wednesday - one focused on the department and the other on Lewis and Clark Discovery Initiative funding for schools. The audit questioned the process used to review funding priorities set by the Department of Higher Education.
"When it gets to the General Assembly, they just start messing around with those, and appropriating (funds) in different ways," Montee said. "The universities have all hired lobbyists to try to protect their money, or to get more for them. But it's a zero-sum game, so when they are lobbying to get more money for the University of Missouri system, it is coming out of one of the other systems, and we're seeing a lot of that."
Interference by lawmakers meant some schools got more money and some less than recommended, Montee said.
"There were three different projects that were 'high priority' that didn't get funded at all," she said.
The three projects: $58.1 million for Schrenk Hall at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, about $87.5 million for a Health Sciences Research Center at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and $50 million for Miller Nichols Library and Academic Commons at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
But the General Assembly funded projects that "just came out of nowhere," Montee said.
"When we looked at these 16 projects and said, where did these come from, they definitely came out of special interests in the General Assembly," Montee said.
The 16 projects came to $36.7 million and are not listed as priorities, the audit states.
"... It is possible at least one of the three unfunded priority projects could have been funded if some of the 16 lower-priority projects had not received appropriations," the audit states.
In one case, a lawmaker who wanted a "business incubator" at Southeast Missouri State University got funding for the project, but SMSU did not make the $5 million incubator a priority and instead wanted funds for maintenance, Montee said.
"Southeast Missouri is one of those areas where they've got a couple of brand-new things going on there, and then they have buildings that are crumbling," she said.
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