Lawson, Jones primary could highlight differences in commitment to battling attacks on FAMU

FAMU alumna and U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown still hasn’t ruled out running in District 10 in Central Florida if her federal lawsuit against the redrawn map for her current District 5 (CD5) fails. FAMU alumnus Alfred “Al” Lawson is running for the new CD5 in North Florida and FAMU alumna Mia Jones, a current state representative from Jacksonville, has said she might enter the race if Brown decides against seeking reelection.

Lawson and Jones would both be vying to represent FAMU in Congress if they faced off in a primary and would likely tout their records on FAMU issues in the Florida Legislature. One FAMU issue where Lawson and Jones have shown big differences in commitment is on defending FAMU control of the budget for the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering (COE).

Back in 1987, Lawson was a state representative when FAMU President Frederick S. Humphries struck a deal with FSU President Bernie Sliger for FAMU to receive control of the COE budget in exchange for him agreeing to support Innovation Park as the building site for the COE. Lawson worked with FAMU alumna and state Sen. Carrie Meek, who was a role model for him, to move the annual appropriation for the COE into the FAMU general revenue line that year.

When Lawson became a state senator in 2000, Meek had already served eight years in the U.S. House of Representatives where she courageously battled with Speakers Newt Gingrich and Denny Hastert. As a Florida senator, Lawson continued the work Meek had done to keep control of the COE budget at FAMU. He led the way in stopping a 2007 legislative plan to move the COE fiscal agent duties from FAMU to FSU. Then-FSU President T.K. Wetherell said the plan would have let FSU make the management choices for the budget.

“We’re just going to manage the money,” Wetherell said in a quote published by the Tallahassee Democrat in 2007.

Lawson was able to get the COE budget moved back to FAMU in the Senate despite the fact that he was in a Democrat in a majority Republican chamber and former Senate President Jim King, a FSU alumnus, had said the budget shift to FSU was “a done deal.”

Jones hasn’t followed the Carrie Meek leadership model of working hard to preserve FAMU control of the COE budget.

In May 2015, after the legislature created a new budget entity for the COE appropriation, a new Joint College of Engineering Governance Council decided that it was going to start calling the shots about what happens to the $12.9M COE budget instead of FAMU. This has made it possible for the FSU representatives and Board of Governors (BOG) Chancellor Marshall Criser, III to just outvote FAMU on budget decisions.

Jones hasn’t done anything to challenge this even though the there isn’t any language in the General Appropriations Act that says the Joint College of Engineering Governance Council is in charge of the $12.9M budget for the COE.

The individual who is elected to represent FAMU in the new minority-access District 5 that runs from Duval through Gadsden Counties can’t be someone who has let attacks on FAMU go unanswered. A person who backs down to John Thrasher and his allies in the Florida capitol definitely isn’t ready to take on the Tea Party and GOP leadership in Washington, DC.