MOHELA’s political, fiscal fallout

For Columbia, Gov. Matt Blunt’s 17-month-old plan to cash in assets of the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MOHELA) and fund construction at public universities ended not with a bang but with a whimper.

House Republican leaders were intent on passing the plan without amendments and sending the Senate-approved version straight to the Republican governor for his signature. They succeeded quickly, largely on a party-line vote, although a few Republicans—such as Therese Sander of Moberly—voted “no” in solidarity with Missouri Right to Life and the Catholic Conference, which opposed the plan.

A notable exception was Republican Rep. Ed Robb of Columbia, who, over the period, shifted from support to uncertainty to last-minute opposition as the campus was stripped of its projects; first the governor accommodated anti-stem-cell, anti-abortion forces by nixing the $87 million health sciences research center, and then Senate leaders punished Chuck Graham by killing the $31 million outpatient cancer clinic here.

Robb’s opposition appeared to provide political cover for Graham, a Democrat who faces a re-election campaign next year and must consider a possible backlash—particularly in the business community—against his attempts to filibuster the plan that resulted in at least a one-year delay in the cancer clinic. Graham appreciated Robb’s change of heart. But the first reading was misleading.

Two days later, Robb was attacking Graham on MOHELA and then said he was considering challenging the incumbent in 2008.
Graham “was never going to vote for the bill under any circumstances strictly because of politics” and strong opposition to Blunt’s general initiatives, Robb said.

Robb, a former University of Missouri faculty member, said he would have voted for the MOHELA authorization if it had any sizable project for Columbia, like Blunt’s original package that had included the health sciences research center.

Although he said immediately after the vote that he opposed the MOHELA plan because it capped the curators’ ability to raise tuition, Robb said later that he largely discounted that effect because the Coordinating Board for Higher Education can waive a 5 percent penalty. “Nevertheless, I’m just dead set against the government getting into the business of setting prices,” Robb said.

He also would have supported the bill if it had set limits on embryonic stem-cell research. “If I was the senator, the restriction on each of the buildings would not have been a problem. That type of research didn’t exist 10 years ago, and we don’t know that it will be a priority in six more years or so,” Robb said.

Robb understands that he faces a tough battle, if he runs, because of Graham’s superior media relations and because of indignation in the Columbia community about Blunt, whom Robb defends. “The media there are hostile to the governor—even the cartoonists. The governor designed his entire package (initially) around Columbia, and he didn’t have to. He didn’t win Boone County in the governor’s election. But he put the money on the table and said, ‘Just help me give it to you,’” Robb said.

Despite his background, Robb faces difficulties on the higher education front. Missouri is still funding public colleges and universities at 2000 levels, and the legislature handled the building projects, for all practical purposes, in reverse rather than following the usual and constitutional provision for letting the House shape the spending bills first. Despite serving as vice chair of the House Budget Committee, Robb had little or no impact on the final MOHELA product.

Graham said blaming him for Columbia’s exclusion from the MOHELA plan is a mistake. “I don’t think it’s fair to hold me responsible” for Columbia’s MOHELA outcome, Graham said, “because of the way the governor abused the process. Only the governor can put projects on the list” for so-called supplemental appropriations.

Blunt alone was responsible for removing the health sciences research center from the list, Graham said.

While the Senate Republican leaders removed the cancer clinic to punish Graham, Blunt almost immediately rejected that move. Missouri has hundreds of thousands of cancer victims, survivors and their family members who would have lost access to a modern facility and taken umbrage.

Blunt is now expected to advance plans for the cancer facility by adding the project to supplemental appropriations in January.

Graham remains among the leading spokesmen for promoting embryonic stem-cell research and returning Missouri to the economic development emphasis on life sciences it followed for more than a decade—until, ironically, voters approved a constitutional amendment last November that protected such research from legislative attempts to outlaw or restrict it.

A race between Graham and Robb would quickly move to the top of both parties’ political agendas. Robb’s narrow victory last year, in the city’s most Republican areas, showed he had almost unparalleled ability to raise money in a House campaign. Between his personal fund and Republican campaign committees, Robb spent more than $280,000.

Graham, thanks to the MOHELA tussle, became a hero for Democrats and stem-cell research supporters and could draw substantial funds statewide. Polls suggest that Missourians opposed the MOHELA plan, largely because it could lose its ability to continue making loans to students after state colleges and universities raised tuition dramatically earlier in this decade.