Ramrodding UPike plan a bad move for Ky.
This from H-L:
The audacity of rushing the University of Pikeville into the state higher education system, past every sensible objection, is breathtaking.
Yes, it would allow former Gov. Paul Patton to organize one final, open-ended money dump for his city, at taxpayer expense.
However, it also would dump decades worth of carefully considered, and presumably settled, strategic higher education policy, adopted to prevent costly duplication of services and programs.
Using coal severance tax money to lower UPike's tuition to public campus levels is nothing more than an opening ante. Patton, or one of his successors as the institution's president, will come to Frankfort every two years, demanding more cash for more people, programs and facilities, in order to achieve "parity" with the rest of the state system.
The argument will be that mountain kids deserve no less than students elsewhere. Never mind that every other institution in an already-underfunded state system will pay the bill for this budgetary blackjacking...
[House Speaker Greg ] Stumbo is in a position to take legislative and budgetary umbrage at any dissent. For merely expressing itself, carefully and thoughtfully, the Morehead State University board was vilified as "petty" and "small."
I speak for myself — not for that board, on which I serve — when I say that Stumbo, whose skill and insight I long have admired and applauded, was unfair in his criticism.
I'm also disappointed that Patton's use of statistics to make the UPike case requires such close scrutiny, as Bell County Judge-Executive Albey Brock proved in a KET debate this week.
Stumbo and Patton are exceptional public servants, but, like all of us, they are capable of mistakes. That's what turning UPike into You Pay would be — a costly mistake with broad and enduring consequences.
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