House, Senate to clash over future of SC college board

S.C. Commission on Higher Education leaders are denouncing a House proposal to slash that agency’s funding and strip much of its authority to vet college construction projects.

But the Senate’s version of the state budget that takes effect July 1, passed this week, would restore that money and authority, setting up yet another clash over the embattled college oversight board’s future and purpose.

The House plan comes after CHE leaders in January asked lawmakers for an added $1.85 million a year to hire the staff that the agency says it needs to oversee the state’s 33 public colleges and technical schools.

Without that added money, CHE chair Tim Hofferth said, the agency cannot adequately review schools’ academic programs or examine the financial viability of proposals to build new classroom buildings, dorms and stadiums.

Over the past 10 years, CHE, largely acknowledged to be a toothless agency, has dropped the ball on vetting some $3.7 billion in college building projects, Hofferth said. Instead, the agency rubber-stamped projects, with little scrutiny, until last year, he said.

Rather than offer the agency more money, House budget writers this year passed a budget proviso removing CHE’s responsibility to review colleges’ plans for new athletic stadiums, parking structures, dorms or building renovations.

Some college leaders – including the presidents of the University of South Carolina, Clemson University and the Medical University of South Carolina – had asked lawmakers to limit CHE’s “redundant oversight” of construction projects, saying they can police themselves.

Under the House proposal, CHE leaders say about 70 percent of the projects that the agency now reviews instead would go straight to other state boards for approval.

The future of CHE long has been debated.

Critics say the agency needs to be strengthened — given more regents-like powers, as in other states — so it can weed out expensive duplication in S.C. colleges.

However, colleges and their hometown legislators question the need for the agency.

State Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, who sits on the House panel that decides higher education funding, said she would prefer a more powerful CHE. But, she added, proposals to create a stronger board of regents-like agency have gone nowhere.

The Orangeburg Democrat said the idea behind the House proviso was to focus CHE’s limited staff on auditing academic programs – and let other state boards handle construction projects.

“There are other venues within our system that can handle some of that,” Cobb-Hunter said. “If you don’t have the staff, let’s narrow your focus and use your staff in areas that matter more. For me, that’s academic programming.”

Hofferth notes lawmakers blasted CHE in 2015 – threatening to defund the agency – for failing to raise red flags about S.C. State University’s financial struggles. Now, he says, lawmakers are resisting CHE’s efforts to closely monitor the financial health of S.C. colleges.

“The state has a lot invested in its institutions, and failure is expensive,” said Hofferth, a Chapin businessman appointed to CHE by former Gov. Nikki Haley in 2015. “Do we have to wait until the next crisis in order to do the right thing?”

The House also struck $345,000 from CHE’s budget, money the agency pays to staff who ensure state lottery scholarship money is given only to eligible students, former CHE director Gary Glenn said.

Cobb-Hunter said House budget writers thought “it shouldn’t require that much money to carry out that function.”

The Senate’s budget proposal restores that money and the authority to vet construction projects. The differences between the two chamber’s budgets will be hashed out in a conference committee.

State Sen. Harvey Peeler, R-Cherokee, the acting Senate Education Committee chair, said CHE has a place in state government’s future.

“Really, it’s a toothless tiger,” Peeler said. “We need to put some teeth into it and use it for what I think their mission should be — to oversee, filter and give guidance to the overall state of South Carolina’s need for higher education.”

This story was originally published April 6, 2017 at 6:41 PM with the headline "House, Senate to clash over future of SC college board."