Remember how State Rep. Rene Oliveira and Texas Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. declined to take up the fight in the legislature to include UTB-TSC in the annual pie-cutting of the millionaire oil-and-gas wealth generated by the Permanent University Fund?
Calling it a "contentious" undertaking, they instead were satisfied to receive the meager (and decreasing) offerings of the Higher Educational Assistance Funds (HEAF).
The Permanent University Fund (PUF) is a public endowment contributing to the support of institutions of The University of Texas System and the Texas A&M University System that were parts of those systems when the HEAF was created. The PUF provides support (in the form of construction dollars from PUF bond proceeds) to 21 institutions of the UT and AM Systems, including the health-related institutions of both systems and the Texas A&M land grant research and service agencies. The PUF was established in the Texas Constitution of 1876 through the appropriation of land grants previously given to The University of Texas at Austin plus 1 million acres. The land grants to the PUF were completed in 1883 with the contribution of an additional 1 million acres of land. Today, the PUF still owns approximately 2.1 million acres of land located in 24 counties primarily in West Texas, but most of its assets are securities held by the fund.
"According to the most recent revenue estimates from the Comptroller of Public Accounts, Texas faces a budget shortfall of at least $15 billion and perhaps as much as $27 billion for the 2012-2013 biennium. For the University, this could mean a reduction in state appropriations as high as 25 to 30 percent."
Texas faces a budget shortfall estimated at $25 billion, according to recent numbers.
State agencies were asked to include budget cuts of 10 percent in their Legislative Appropriation Requests (LARs) for 2012-2013. It is important to note that higher education has taken on disproportionate cuts totaling $520 million or 41 percent of overall reductions in relation to its total share of the state budget. Higher Education represents 12.5 percent of the total state budget or 18 percent of the total General Revenue expenditures.
UTB/TSC was required to reduce budgets by 5 percent early in the spring of 2010. The reduction totaled $3.975 million which was split between FY 2010 and 2011 or just under $2.0 million per year.
And now, as the "partnership" is being dissolved and the TSC cash cow dries up, where will the university turn to make up the annual $50 million "transfer" that it got from TSC?
When the UTB-TSC partnership was created in 1991, the school was required not to seek funding from the PUF. In fact, UTB and UT-Pan Am are the only two UT System institutions that do not share in the annual pie divvied up in Austin. According to a document prepared at the behest of UTB President Juliet Garcia, that was the cost of bringing UT to town.
But now, as UTB strikes out on its own, will this change?
According to the PUF website, its portfolio includes private investments, marketable alternative investments, and various other specialized public market investments. The PUF is managed using universal endowment principles and dictates that distributions to the Available University Fund (AUF) are based on the total return of the PUF investments.
The University of Texas System Board of Regents has established a distribution policy that provides stable, inflation adjusted annual distributions to the AUF to support the two university systems while preserving the real value of the PUF investments.
Jerry Patterson, chairman of the Permanent University Fund’s Board for Lease of University Lands, said this year's bidding for a Midland-area lease was strong. The land went for more than $1,000 per acre.
“This is a great day for the University of Texas and Texas A&M University systems," Patterson is quoted in a news account of the announcement. “$206 million is a lot of money.”
According to press reports, the lease sale topped the previous record, set in April, of roughly $54.4 million. The bonus sale brought in more revenue to the Permanent University Fund than all of the fund’s oil royalties from last year combined.
In fact, and this will make Juliet's mouth water, the distribution from the PUF was increased from $506.4 million in fiscal year 2011 to $575.5 million for fiscal year 2012 by the UT System Board of Regents.
The UT System has an annual operating budget of $12.8 billion (FY 2011) including $2.3 billion in sponsored programs funded by federal, state, local and private sources. Yet, neither it nor the Texas Legislature wants to ante up and pay the back rent it owes TSC of about $10 million.
As TSC General Counsel Dan Rentfro outlined in a Feb. 2009 memo to the board, "no local community provides the level of financial support for its component institution than the resident of the TSC district have provided UTB..."
And, he further notes, "the current arrangement is formally unfair to UTB because there is no rational reason for leaving (UTB) out of PUF,' but recognizes that "UT System is profoundly opposed to our attempting to gain access to PUF, for fear that it will spur similar attempts by other institutions across the state: i.e. the 'Pandora's Box phenomenon.'"
There is, in fact, a precedent for inclusion of minority institutions into the PUF. Texas A&M Prairie View – backed by supportive findings by the U.S. Office of Civil Rights was cut in when the traditionally-Black insitutuin threatened legal action.
In 1983, the Texas Legislature proposed a constitutional amendment to restructure the Permanent University Fund (PUF) to include Prairie View AM University as a beneficiary of its proceeds. The 1983 amendment also dedicated the University to enhancement as an "institution of the first class" under the governing board of the Texas A&M University System.
The constitutional amendment was approved by the voters on November 6, 1984. In January 1985, the Board of Regents of the Texas A&M University System responded to the 1984 Constitutional Amendment by stating its intention that Prairie View A&M University become "an institution nationally recognized in its areas of education and research."
The Board also resolved that the University receive its share of the Available University Fund.So how abou it Juliet, Rene and Eddie? Ready for a "contentious" attempt to wrest some PUF funds for the local school?
6 comments:
THIS IS A WELL WRITTEN ARTICLE, ASSUMING YOUR FACTS, QUOTE'S AND #'S ARE CORRECT, AND I TRUST THAT THEY ARE, WHY DON'T YOU SUBMIT IT TO THE HERALD'S "MY TURN". AT A MINIMUM IT IS GOOD FOOD FOR THOUGHT FOR OUR COMMUNITY.
THANKS!
The idiots, Rene and Eddie will do nothing. They are rats, with long tails.
Even if it was submitted it will not be printed or for sure they will have the response with twisted facts on the next page. The Herald will not print anything that hurts Julieta or makes her look bad.
As long time advocate for the inclusion of UTB and PAU in the PUF, I assure you that, if anything, this article is understated. There is no question that the rationale that allowed Prairie View in should be applied to these two minority serving institutions. Even UTB/TSC's famously inflated fee and tuition structure has this anomaly at its core. Fundamentally, there has never been a systemic structural approach to building a University in Brownsville, instead there has been a commitment to doing everything on the cheap while ill-advised administrators have striven to create a very traditional university on the backs of a community tax base that was never designed to support the demands of a traditional university. Recall that, for years, UTB/TSC resisted being identified as a "community university" before eventually embracing it as a sop to critics to camouflage the reality of its very traditional and very inappropriate approach to facts on the ground.
Damm the people of UT Brownsville ! Damm them and the Board of TSC ! !
So now in today's news paper it reports "All THE EDUCATION LEADERS WANT TO WORK together TO HELP THE dumb ass students to make it at UT Brownsville or TSC ! !
WHAT THE FUK did you do with the billion you got, spent wasted the past 20 years ?
So now nobody gets to make the great education leaders who spent the last 20 years helping the "dumb ass graduates of BISD" nobody makes them account for the failed plans, the failed fancy pancy programs from TSC / UT B ?
Lets show up at the special dinners, the side shows of UTB and now the new announcements of TSC and make them answer the tough FUKING questions ! !
Lets's demand some asses are kicked out and not be allowed to waste another billion ! !
What the fuk ? Or are we really the dumb ass people they talk about ? ?
OCCUPY TSC AND UT BROWNSVILLE ! !
occupy tsc and ut brownsville ! !
OCCUPY TSC AND UT BROWNSVILLE ! !
Julieta and her "Committee" will try to get as much of any financial pie as she can. She failed the community when she avoided the community college needs and focused on graduate programs for which there were few students. She imported foreign students instead of developing programs to serve Brownsville. Juliet serves herself first and the oommunity down the road. She has failed Brownsville.
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