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For his part, Corcoran, holding degrees from private colleges, has no meaningful ties to our state university system.  But it is still difficult to see the motivation for his recent foray into higher education fundraising operations, other than a desire to score political points on some easy targets that can’t fight back.   Had Corcoran sought to determine why there are no conservatives on our campuses, or insight into the liberal bias at our schools, as pointed out by Professor Paulson of USF in a series of articles on the subject, one might at least understand his motivation.  This pursuit, however, just makes no sense.

Years ago, the state created Direct Support Organizations to enable quasi-private, non-profit groups to support our universities and their missions with scholarships, athletics, and other fundraising activities.   These DSO’s include Alumni Foundations, Science Foundations, Booster groups and other entities.

Some of these organizations have employees who are FTE’s of the State of Florida.  Given that the role of these employees is to raise private dollars for state universities, it seems logical that they be state employees.  Because they are, however, the Florida House has argued it has a right to access all the records of these Foundations and has, on at least one occasion, turned information over to the public that the organizations believe are NOT in the public domain.   Corcoran’s goal seems to be to embarrass some of these groups for spending large sums of money on employees, travel and fundraising activities, even without knowing the affect or efficiency of these expenditures.

There should be no doubt that the salaries and state-paid travel for these groups and employees does, in fact, belong in the public domain, but Corcoran seems to want to go further and bring more and more information into the Sunshine and place strict limits on many of the activities of these organizations.

With plenty of waste in an $82B state budget to explore, Corcoran’s focus on these small groups makes the Speaker look like a bully, simply trying to score political points for himself. To add insult to injury, despite years of being kicked around by the legislature, our universities are thriving in many ways, and now, with state funding levels at all-time lows, the Speaker wants to kick the fundraisers in the teeth simply because he can and he knows they can’t fight back.

While this may or may not affect the morale of the fundraisers, what is more dangerous for the universities is if donors believe their contemplations, deliberations and other communications with state universities is a matter of public record. These benefactors may, instead, choose to work with charities that don’t embarrass their donors by making their information public.  In other words, big donors will not communicate with our universities and critical fundraising will suffer.