General Assembly Lays Down Friday Deadline For UVA Slush Fund Response
This morning’s installment comes from the Virginian-Pilot, who writes not from any love for the University of Virginia’s antics, but more out of a disdain for Richmond’s backing away from post-secondary education:
To be clear, the implication of this letter — either taken on its face or to its logical conclusion — is that the General Assembly, in the exercise of its multitudinous powers, would presume to now manage Virginia’s colleges and universities.
A reminder: For more than a quarter century, Virginia has progressively, steadily and specifically backed off its financial commitment to those same colleges and universities. If you want to know why tuition and fees are so much higher than long-ago, you need only visit the State Capitol. All answers lie within.
What letter, do you ask? Why this one — helpfully provided by WVIR:
In July, lawmakers sent letters to UVA requesting a 10-year accounting ledger for the sources and the originally approved uses for money in the Operating Fund and the Strategic Investment Fund. State legislators are asking the school to explain how operating balances were transferred to create a $2.3 billion surplus.
In another letter sent to President Teresa Sullivan and Rector William Goodwin (see below) on Monday, August 8, lawmakers say the university’s response to last month’s request was missing information, and according to state code, it must be turned over.
Legislators are asking for a response to this renewed request by Friday, August 12. Additionally, UVA is asked to “suspend all expenditures, transfers, and project awards from the ‘Strategic Investment Fund’ until this matter is fully resolved.”
That’s a week to respond, folks. Anyone thinking that the General Assembly (both parties) was not taking this slush fund seriously just received a serious, abiding wake up call.
Once again, the Roanoke Times — who has been performing excellent coverage of this scandal, reminds readers of the stakes and implications here:
The discovery of a fund of this size — especially when the university has raised tuition 74 percent over the past seven years — is one that has quite naturally gotten the attention of legislators from both parties.
Let’s stop here and say again what we’ve said before: It’s quite possible that university administrators here should be praised for their fiscal management and foresight. Somehow they’ve accumulated a fund that will let them invest in making the university better, without having to ask the General Assembly for even more tax dollars than they already are.
That’s not quite how some legislators see it, though. They see tuition blowing through the roof of the Rotunda while the university sits on billions the legislators didn’t know it had. They see a university that decided to “consistently overcharge for its services” so it could build up “a covert surplus.”
We don’t know accounting. But we do know politics, and here’s how we see the politics: This started with just two legislators asking questions — state Sen. Bill DeSteph, R-Virginia Beach, and state Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax County. Now there are a whole lot more legislators weighing in, and they don’t appear to be getting the answers they wanted.
…which strikes at a question of culture at UVA.
If the General Assembly had been treated as more than a “constituency” by the University? Maybe this would have stopped at a few questions. If Helen Dragas had been taken seriously, perhaps this would have ended differently.
Part of the problem here is that UVA continues to raise tuition rates on students while pleading poverty to Richmond.
Another consideration is that it was only recently that the UVA Board of Visitors attempted to address tuition costs in the aggregation of a multi-billion dollar slush fund. No one — and I mean no one — believes this to be a “strategic investment fund” as being sold to folks today. In fact, the label insults the intelligence of most in Richmond.
There’s the other minor part about that without Helen Dragas blowing the whistle here, none of this would have ever come to the sunlight — a serious, abiding problem. Kerry Dougherty of the Virginian-Pilot offers her thoughts:
Dragas hit a nerve.
Reaction to the Post article was swift. The current rector bristled at the “slush fund” allegation, calling it “false and irresponsible” while state lawmakers – Republicans and Democrats from all corners of the commonwealth – fired off letters full of questions about transparency at U.Va.
Asked about her decision to use the term “slush fund,” Dragas said this was a case of “a small group of people meeting behind closed doors considering how to spend large sums of money for other than intended purposes.”
Sounds a lot like a slush fund to me.
More to the point, as the Richmond-Times Dispatch has offered, when lawmakers ask questions and get fobbed off? That’s never a good idea:
The lawmakers sent a letter Monday to President Teresa A. Sullivan and Rector William H. Goodwin Jr. citing state code that “the rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia shall be at all times subject to the control of the General Assembly.”
The university can’t claim exemptions under the state Freedom of Information Act in complying with their requests, including for presidential working papers, the lawmakers contend.
The letter signed by 11 delegates and senators from both parties complained that their initial inquiry received a “less-than-adequate response” one week ago from Patrick D. Hogan, U.Va.’s executive vice president and chief operating officer.
His response and a commentary written by Goodwin have done “nothing to alleviate our mounting concerns,” the letter says.
They’re right too — UVA is not exempt from FOIA in compliance with the request.
What is amazing to me at this rate is the disconnect between Charlottesville and Richmond at this rate. Richmond is taking this deadly seriously. Charlottesville? Doesn’t seem to be taking this seriously at all… which almost begs the question whether UVA knows something the General Assembly does not.
Sadly, experience dictates that UVA is about to find out that the General Assembly really does hold all the cards at this rate. After all, the Commonwealth of Virginia owns the Rotunda, its name is on the University, its tax dollars publicly finance the institution.
The General Assembly isn’t a mere constituency. They are the elected officials of the people by whose leave UVA operates… and that should never be forgotten, abused, or taken lightly.
What is shocking to those outside of Charlottesville is that Mr. Jefferson’s University would be so tone-deaf as to the very real concerns being voice from Richmond. $2.3 billion dollars socked away by stealth for an institution that has resisted the substance of modernization while giving lip-service as to form?
A staring contest with Richmond is a gamble at best. In the eyes of the General Assembly, that’s house money ill-gained. They want it back, and the obfuscation and delay isn’t going to work for much longer.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The short answer is the Virginia General Assembly.
DISCLAIMER: The author is a 4th year BIS student at the University of Virginia
