UTB-TSC AGREEMENT SMELLS OF COVER-UP

By Juan Montoya
In a classic example of garbled academese, the University of Texas System Board of Regents has been reported to have resolved to continue the "renegotiations" of the partnership agreement between the UT System, the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College.
Calling it an "enhancement" of the partnership, the board wants to tailor the agreement between the two entities to reflect that it "understands the importance of seeking a more efficient, effective model of collaboration to fully realize the challenges in higher education in the coming years."
The regents also agreed to "clarify ownership and responsibilities within the partnership, streamline organizational and reporting structure, establish more clearly defined leadership goals, offer transparency and clearer understanding of mission to all stakeholders, and provide a funding model that builds on efficiencies of partnership," among other principles.
What is there to understand?
Right now the college district taxpayers are footing the bill for all construction on the UTB-TSC hybrid college campus. Not the Permanent University Fund that is the recipient of oil and gas royalties, mind you. Our representatives at the genesis of the "partnership" agreed the Brownsville campus would do without those, thank you.
What we wanted was the prestige and were willing to concede that we should subsidize one of the richest university systems through taxing our local residents. So what if we're poverty stricken down here? Think of the prestige, the image, the bragging rights that we are part of the burnished orange tradition.
And what have we gotten in return?
The UT System has been a deadbeat about paying the college district for the lease outlined in the 1991 document and updated several times.
In fact, the oil and gas-rich UT System is some $10.8 million in arrears to the local taxpayers. It's interesting that now the trustees want to "alter" the agreement.
It has taken them this long to realize that the original "partnership" was nothing more that an academics' generated scam on local college district taxpayers.
Any new building that gets constructed and has the UT label stamped on the front door is paid by college district taxpayers in the form of bonds that amount to nothing more than future debt for local people.
TSC and UTB signed the partnership agreement in 1991, which allows the schools to pool resources, sharing administrative costs and campus buildings.
The issue has come to a head because the original agreement stated that the Texas Legislature would pay rent to TSC for the lands and buildings and share in administrative costs. But after running in arrears to the tune of $10.8 million in unpaid rent, the local yokels went begging for their money to the UT System instead.
Apparently, the state was too broke to pay TSC a thin dime of that $10.8 million to TSC. So, what to do? Create a "joint task force," of course. That committee was formed not only to resolve the issue of the deadbeat UT System, but also to make changes in the the overall partnership agreement.
"The committee has met more than half a dozen times," board Chairman David Oliveira told the local daily recently. "We’ve discussed ways to strengthen the partnership so it would survive any new administration. We have a great chancellor and president right now, but 20 years from now we don’t know what the administration will look like.
"One of TSC’s main objectives in the renegotiation's will be improving the school’s revenue stream, Oliveira said. Already there's been talk of a barter system that would see the transfer of software and other intellectual property materials to the college instead of hard, cold cash.
If Oliveira really wanted to renegotiate the agreement and get bucks at the same time, he should ask help from his cousin, Texas Rep. Rene Oliveira, who was there at the origins of the agreement.
And the affable milquetoast chairman should demand that any new agreement should:
1. Make the UT System pay for its buildings.
2. Make the state include UTB-TSC in the Permanent University Fund from oil and gas.
3. Include late charges on the $10.8 million in rent arrears.
4. Have local taxpayers pay only for the junior college functions, not for the construction of monuments to Juliet Garcia and the Cardenas clan.
5. If UT wants its name on buildings paid for by future debt by the poorest people in the state, the system should shoulder half the cost or chip in for construction costs and professional services.
6. Have the salaries and benefits extended to the administration paid for by the UT System, not by local residents. When the income level of the average South Texas resident hovers in the low $30,000s why should they bear the burden of carrying bureaucrats earning $100,000(plus)? And besides, the once-respected junior college has become nothing more than a high-school remedial facility and the UTB graduates only 16 percent of those that register over a six-year period.
That kind of performance justifies these inflated salaries?
Yes. Let's revisit this "agreement."
But this time don't lay over and play dead and get bamboozled by the slick flatlanders from Austin. After 18 years of sticking it to the local residents, it's time for our trustees and state legislators to demonstrate a little spine and defend us, their constituents.