Neither the House nor the Senate version of the General Appropriations
Act explicitly says what institution will receive the appropriation on behalf
of the College of Engineering. The legislature should place some clarifying
language into the law that directly states an intent for FAMU to continue
receiving and managing those funds.
The new budget entity for the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering (138A) is now one of the “special units” for the State University System of Florida. The others include: the Institute of Food and Agricultural Science (139), USF Medical Center (140), UF Health Center (141), FSU Medical School (142), UCF Medical School (143), FIU Medical School (144), and FAU Medical School (145).
The budget entity for IFAS does not explicitly state
which university will receive the money. But other parts of the appropriations
bills in both chambers clarify that the University of Florida is charge of
IFAS. There is no language in either the House or Senate appropriations bill that clarifies which institution
will be the recipient of the funds for the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering budget
entity.
If there is no language in the law that directly states that FAMU
is supposed to continue receiving and managing the budget, then it could create
confusion after the legislative session.
The Senate appropriations bill states that: “From the funds
in Specific Appropriation 138A, $12,997,476 is provided to the FAMU-FSU Joint
College of Engineering. The Joint College Governance Council is established and comprised of the
Presidents (or their designees), the provosts, the Vice Presidents for
Research, and the Chief Financial Officers of Florida Agricultural and
Mechanical University and Florida State University…The Chancellor of the State
University System (or designee) is included as a voting member of the council.”
The Senate language could be used to promote an interpretation
that the Joint College Governance Council will be in charge of the budget.
Back in 1987, FAMU President
Frederick S. Humphries and FSU President Bernie Sliger signed an agreement that
said that FAMU would permanently manage the operations budget. The two presidents
also agreed that FSU would be permanently in charge of selecting the dean of
the college.
It would be unfair for the Joint College Governance Council to start controlling the
budget because FAMU would lose its part of the deal from 1987 but FSU would keep its
part.
The BOG chancellor is the tie-breaking vote on the Joint College
Governance Council. The BOG did not publicly try to stop former FSU President
T.K. Wetherell when he tried to take the engineering budget away from FAMU in
2007. It also did not publicly try to stop then-state Sen. John Thrasher when he asked
the legislature to split the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering last year. FSU and the BOG
chancellor could simply vote together in order to make sure that FSU gets its
way on all the big budget decisions.
The FAMU advocates in the Florida Legislature should work to prevent
this from happening by introducing clarifying language that states that FAMU
will continue to receive the operations funds and make the budgeting decisions.