Franklin Pierce University has a Lobbyist in Washington
EDUCATION
Keene Sentinel
Kenna Caprio
Boston University Washington News Service
March 6, 2008
WASHINGTON — Joining a long list of higher education institutions, Franklin Pierce University has hired lobbyists to represent the school’s interests with Congress and help it acquire more federal funding.
“We decided that we needed to have a place at the table in D.C.,” said Brian Stuart, the university’s director of marketing and communications. It is smart strategy to have a voice “where policy is being formulated,” he said.
The small liberal arts university located in Rindge, N.H., hired lobbyists for the first time in February of 2007.
Eastpoint Strategies, a Manchester-based strategic consulting firm, was hired by Franklin Pierce to lobby on its behalf in Washington. The university paid Eastpoint $60,000 in 2007.
“The fact is they’re from New Hampshire,” George J. Hagerty, president of the university, said. “They know the state and the needs of the state. It was very easy for Franklin Pierce University to explain [to Eastpoint Strategies] who we are and the value we bring to the state.”
Eastpoint’s Darwin Cusack, chief of staff to former New Hampshire Congressman Charlie Bass and Andrew Emerson, Bass’ senior legislative assistant, work on behalf of Franklin Pierce. Neither would comment on the firm’s work for the university and said only that they do not discuss the company’s clients.
In hiring the firm, Franklin Pierce joins a long list of schools, ranging from Boston University to Wheaton College in Massachusetts, which employ lobbyists.
Boston University spent $480,000 on lobbying in 2007 while Yale spent $640,000. Wheaton College spent $60,000 according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan organization that tracks money in politics and lobbying.
In 2007 alone, universities and other higher education associations, such as the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, spent $66 million on lobbyists, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Higher education lobbyists are hired to do many things in Washington. They work on everything from helping schools acquire federal funds to collecting information about legislation that will affect higher education.
In October 2007 Franklin Pierce University received $143,000 in funding for its nursing program with the aid of Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., in hopes of creating a Bachelor of Science in Nursing.
“I have a staff member who works on special projects with constituents,” Hodes said, and Franklin Pierce went through the application process.
“We try to prioritize particular merits of one kind or another with important public purpose. Issues around healthcare with nursing shortages are important. It ends up as a personal process,” Hodes said.
The university also received a $335,000 grant recently to help provide technology training to persons in the Monadnock region, Stuart said.
“Its purpose is to serve Franklin Pierce and broader benefit the region,” Stuart said. Being a very rural area, access to technology is critical, he said. “We’re a mission driven private liberal arts university. We believe we serve a broad public region and they deserve a local return on their tax dollars,” Stuart said. “The benefit goes beyond the walls of this campus.”
In addition to helping acquire funding, Eastpoint also alerted Franklin Pierce to the changes in the Higher Education Act, information that would have been harder to come by without a presence in Washington, he said.
“From what we understand the Higher Education Act has almost 200 new requirements,” Stuart said.
“In general there would be significant and burdensome info that we would need to collect, find, and report back,” Stuart said, “Much of this data is hard to quantify. And we’re all for improving higher education but we believe it’d be of dubious value.… A lobbyist gives us a heads up so that we can prepare to collect this data to abide by the provisions of the Higher Education Act or we can let our concerns be known, and let our voices be heard in Washington.”
In addition to affecting public policy and seeking funds through the formal federal budgeting process, universities also use lobbyists to try to gain additional funding through earmarks.
Earmarks are attached to pieces of legislation by members of Congress for the benefit of a project or an organization in their districts and are controversial because they circumvent the normal budgetary process.
“Academic earmarks are quite a scourge,” said Leslie Paige, media director of Citizens Against Government Waste, a non-partisan taxpayer watchdog group.
According to Paige, in 1980 the total cost of earmarks was $16 million and in 2000 it was $1 billion.
“Originally earmarking was done by research universities and now it’s spread to a whole other group that has nothing to do with researching,” said James D. Savage, politics professor at the University of Virginia and author of “Funding Science in America: Congress, Universities, and the Politics of the Academic Pork Barrel.”
Peer review is a screening process that forces universities to compete for federal grant funds. Proposals are reviewed by persons from peer institutions who have no interest in the proposal. The process highlights the advantages and disadvantages of a specific proposal and allows for decisions to be made based on merit. This system is favored by fiscal conservatives and groups like Citizens Against Government Waste because of the ability to track the money through the entire process.
“Federal dollars should have national merit,” Paige said, but it is impossible to judge the merit of earmarked funds.
When universities compete with other universities for funds it is easier to track the trail of what the money is actually being spent on, as opposed to what it merely was marked for, and whether the funds have had some effect, Paige said.
Ellin J. Nolan, president of Washington Partners, a firm that specializes in lobbying for educational institutions, disagrees. Even with earmarks, she said, universities fill out an application, deal with the agency that oversees that program and file end of year reports. “It is not free money in most instances,” she said.
Smaller universities argue that when it comes to pursuing funding through academic peer review that they are not on a level playing field because larger universities are better known and are able to hire entire departments dedicated to government relations while seeking earmarks from their congressional representatives gives them more access.
“I suppose to the extent, coming to a congressman’s office, it could be viewed as a less cumbersome and expeditious process,” Hodes said. “There may be some leveling of the playing field.”
Nolan said some universities “want lobbyists and that some do not. Institutions receive earmarks without them.”
But for Franklin Pierce having a lobbyist has been a help.
“We need an ear to the ground and place at the table in Washington,” Stuart said. “What’s the best way to do that? What’s the best strategy? That choice for us was to hire a lobbyist.”
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