University Times

Last year, a Pennsylvania legislator proposed an amendment to the University’s state funding bill that would have required Pitt to reimburse the state for legal expenses incurred by the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission due to actions taken by Pitt’s Environmental Law Clinic.

The amendment was aimed at punishing the clinic for representing groups fighting the Mon-Fayette Expressway project. (State lawmakers already had barred Pitt from spending state money on the clinic itself because it had represented groups opposed to logging in the Allegheny National Forest.)

Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives initially approved a Pitt appropriation bill with the amendment included. But the legislator who introduced the amendment, Rep. Thomas A. Michlovic, D-Allegheny County, later had second thoughts and made it clear he would not fight for the amendment when Pitt’s bill came up for a second vote in the House. The state Senate cut the amendment from Pitt’s bill, and the House concurred.

But that probably won’t be the last time that state lawmakers threaten to micro-manage the University, Pitt Harrisburg lobbyists warned the University Senate’s budget policies committee (BPC) last week.

Paul A. Supowitz, Pitt director of commonwealth, city and county relations, said: “We can get into philosophical arguments about academic freedom issues, but the bottom line is that [Pennsylvania lawmakers] look at it as: We’re giving you this money, and we have a right to influence how you use it. And it shouldn’t be used to take on a commonwealth agency like the turnpike commission.”

In recent years, the best-known example of state interference in the University’s internal affairs concerned health benefits for Pitt employees’ same-sex partners. At one point, legislators threatened to withhold Pitt’s state funding if the University extended the benefits.

Currently, legislators are taking a wait-and-see attitude on the issue, said Supowitz and Charles F. McLaughlin, assistant director of commonwealth relations.

Supowitz told BPC: “I’ve heard legislators who support the concept of same-sex health benefits make one of the same points that the University’s committee [that studied the issue] made in its report to the chancellor last year — that there needs to be a coordinated effort by all four of the state-related universities” to convince Harrisburg of the need for offering the benefits.

“There are a few legislators who are supportive [of allowing state-supported universities to offer same-sex health benefits], there are a lot who would very much frown on that kind of initiative, and there are probably a good many in the middle somewhere,” said Supowitz.

He and McLaughlin quoted James Carville’s description of social and political attitudes in Pennsylvania: “You’ve got Philadelphia at one end of the state, Pittsburgh at the other end, and Alabama in the middle.”

Pitt has requested a 5 percent increase in its state appropriation for the fiscal year that begins on July 1, 2003. BPC members asked: How realistic is that request, given the growing likelihood that Pennsylvania will face another $1 billion-plus deficit this year?

“I would say, if the worst predictions come true in terms of the economy, that 5 percent probably is unlikely,” Supowitz said.

On the other hand, a 5 percent increase “is not an unreasonable request and it’s one that can easily be defended,” McLaughlin said. “We can go to the legislature and the governor’s office and say, ‘This is really just 1 percent more than the University was promised two years ago” before lawmakers imposed mid-year cuts.

Political and economic conditions in Pennsylvania are especially unpredictable right now, McLaughlin and Supowitz said, citing an uncertain economy, the upcoming election of a new governor and a new session of the General Assembly.

The governor “sets the bar” for state funding of higher education when he announces his proposed budget each February, noted McLaughlin. Last year, for example, Gov. Schweiker proposed cutting funding to Pitt and Pennsylvania’s other state-supported universities by 5 percent. Ultimately, Schweiker and the General Assembly compromised on a 3.6 percent cut.

McLaughlin said: “Do you think, if Gov. Schweiker had come to the General Assembly with his budget last year and it had proposed holding our funding even, with no cuts, that the legislature would have cut us by 3.6 percent and gotten away with it? No way.”

— Bruce Steele