Cash-Strapped Kentucky Colleges Look to Lobbyists

Jul. 24–FRANKFORT — Like Boeing or Halliburton, Kentucky’s public universities are increasingly hiring political lobbyists to bring back federal funds from Washington.

The state’s biggest schools — the University of Kentucky, Western Kentucky University and the University of Louisville — have used lobbyists for years. Last year, they reported spending nearly $450,000 combined on federal lobbying, spreading the money between firms that employ former congressmen, White House aides and others.

Now, however, even smaller schools in the state want to buy access on Capitol Hill.

Morehead State University, with about 8,000 students, has signed an $86,671 deal with a Frankfort firm run by former aides to Gov. Ernie Fletcher and U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky. The Kentucky Community and Technical College System just renewed a $155,000 deal with a Washington firm tied to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

The sight of so much college money flowing to political operatives — most connected to the Republican Party, because that’s who runs Washington these days — disturbs some critics.

“It’s an unbelievable, an egregious amount, that we spend on these revolving-door lobbyists who get rich off their stints in public service,” said Richard Beliles, chairman of Common Cause of Kentucky, a watchdog group.

“While we would like to think our state universities are pure and not involved in this sort of political mess, more and more, we would be wrong,” Beliles said. “The universities want to be players in Washington, and, as they have discovered, you have to pay to play.”

But university officials say federal lobbying is a shrewd investment, given a continued drop in state support for higher education.

From 1994 to 2004, the share of Kentucky higher education funding that came from state appropriations fell from 39 percent to 30 percent. Meanwhile, the share of federal funds rose from 11 to 17 percent.

Federal lobbying may be one reason for that, according to school officials.

Federal grants worth hundreds of millions of dollars are available throughout the Beltway bureaucracy, from the National Institutes of Health to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

However, somebody has to show universities where to look for them, when and how to apply and who holds the keys to the vault, said Tim Burcham, vice president of the state’s community and technical college system.

“To explain how the federal appropriations process works … that’s very helpful to us, and not something that we would normally know, because it’s sort of inside baseball,” Burcham said.

As for the need to pay lobbyists, he added, “It’s just a given. In order to be successful, you have to really invest something in the process.”

What Kentucky universities spend isn’t far out of line compared to other schools. UK, for example, last year reported $240,000 in 2003 federal lobbying costs. That was more than the University of Florida ($200,000), but less than Southwest Missouri State University ($290,000), according to a national list compiled by the Chronicle of Higher Education, a weekly newspaper.

The Kentucky Community and Technical College System awarded its first lobbying contract last year to The Federalist Group in Washington, which specializes in corporate advocacy, public relations and well-orchestrated “grassroots” campaigns for clients in the weapons, banking, energy and telecommunications industries.

Its lobbyists, who did not return calls last week, previously served as aides to DeLay and other Republican congressional leaders, as well as in President Bush’s administration. The firm’s marketing brochure promises “valued relationships on both Capitol Hill and the executive branch.”

Those relationships can be valuable indeed, Burcham said.

He rattled off several federal grants the community and technical college system won in the last year thanks to The Federalist Group: $500,000 for its Center of Excellence in Automotive Manufacturing; $400,000 for its Allied Health Education programs; and $100,000 for an historic restoration project in Jefferson County.

While Kentucky’s congressional delegation claims credit for bringing home the bacon — and the state has two senior members on appropriations committees, Rogers in the House and Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell — the fact remains that lobbyists are crucial, Burcham said.

“We go up and visit the delegation members, and they assist us,” he said. “But that’s not the whole process. There’s a much more difficult process behind the scenes, in terms of them balancing all of the requests that they are getting from various parts of the state of Kentucky. Lots of people seek their support.”

Morehead State University admired the success of the state’s large research universities in nabbing federal grants. This year, it decided to follow them.

Rather than hire a Washington lobbying firm, though, Morehead has signed an $86,671 deal with Roll Call Strategies of Frankfort. Roll Call was founded just a few months ago by Jeff Speaks, a former aide in Rogers’ congressional office, and John McCarthy, onetime Fletcher aide and past chairman of the state Republican Party.

In their proposal to Morehead, Speaks and McCarthy listed their many contacts in Washington and Frankfort. McCarthy suggested his leadership as GOP chairman in 2004 helped put his party’s victors into their current jobs, including U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning and U.S. Rep. Geoff Davis.

By hiring Roll Call, they wrote, school officials are guaranteed face-to-face meetings not only with the Kentucky delegation, but also key members of appropriations committees.

Lobbyists act as liaisons, bringing outsiders into the halls of government and making introductions, Speaks said last week.

“It’s a matter of helping universities, or whoever you’re working with, know what’s going on,” Speaks said. “It’s an edge in information, in an understanding of the process.”

That level of access is what Michael Hail, Morehead’s special assistant to the president, said he had in mind when he awarded the contract. Hail added that he and McCarthy attended Centre College together.

Roll Call will help Morehead develop academic and research programs that would be good matches for the various kinds of federal grants available, he said. It also will help the school obtain more federal money for its Space Science Center, a 21- meter satellite tracking antenna used for science and math classes.

“We’ve never done this before, so you may have to give me a year or two before I can tell you exactly what we’ll see out of it,” said Hail, who also teaches political science.

Asked if Morehead essentially is having to buy its way into the federal budget, he replied, “I don’t think we should be concerned about that. We should be happy our universities aren’t trying to do this without the expertise they need to be successful.”

Universities, like any modern American business, had better “come to grips with the nature of hard-boiled politics,” said Ernie Yanarella, UK political scientist and chairman of the university’s Senate Council.

“Higher education has, over the last five or 10 years, learned that in a situation of shrinking resources, those institutions who are best able to convey their agenda in these political forums are the most likely to get additional revenues,” Yanarella said.

Universities that can’t compete for politicians’ attention, either through well-connected lobbyists or other means, “will quite typically find themselves marginalized or short-changed,” he said. “This political message is becoming clearer and clearer.”

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