Politics, Money & A&M

Does Perry has his eye on NSI as a fundraising machine?
Perry has (mis)used A&M before to reward supporters
John White who is a former Chairman of the Board of Regents at Texas A&M, Chancellor Mike McKinney and alum Governor Rick Perry have been making headlines about mixing politics, money and A&M for some time. An article by Jack Stripling at Inside Higher Ed website (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/10/22/texas) describes Guy Diedrich, Dennis Beal’s boss as “a running buddy” of Rick Perry and notes that John White is a fundraiser for his 2010 campaign for re-election.

McKinney also stirred controversy when he ousted A&M President Elsa Murano in June 2009. Murano, the first woman and Hispanic to be selected to fill the post, was forced out by McKinney who said in an evaluation she wasn’t a team player. Stripling said the ousting by McKinney was because Murano promised to hire Brett Giroir a Pentagon official to head A&M campus research operations.

Murano was selected by the nine Perry appointed regents including White, over three university presidents recommended by the search committee. Murano didn’t follow through with a McKinney agreement to conduct sham search process to pick Giroir but instead used the process to hire someone else. McKinney then gave her a terrible review forcing her resignation and created a new position, Vice Chancellor of Research for Giroir. That placed Giroir in a position to supervise Murano’s pick. The second and third ranking administrators were forced into resignation within six weeks. The A&M faculty protested by giving McKinney a vote of no confidence.

Murano did do one favor for McKinney, she fired highly regarded Vice President for Student Affairs Dean Bresciani to make room for Rick Perry’s A&M college roommate Lt. Gen. Joe Weber. Commandant of the Corps of Cadets, Lt. Gen. John Van Alstyne resigned after seven and a half years in January of 2010 rather than serve under Weber who was directed by Murano replacement Bowen Loftin to place the Commandant under Weber’s supervision.

Van Alstyne’s wife, Anita sent an email to friends that was forwarded to Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka. In it she said, “I will not attend any function at which any of the governor’s cronies will be in attendance. He has chosen to put a drunken, coed groping (adjective removed) in power as the Vice President of Student Affairs of this wonderful university.” She went on to say, “It is my great sorrow that we will not be able to save it (A&M) from Rick Perry, Mike McKinney, Bowen Loftin and the Board of Regents.”

A large part of the faculty lack of confidence is over an ongoing fight by McKinney and Perry to commercialize A&M research. According to Houston Chronicle Business Columnist, Loren Steffy in a January 2009 column titled “Politics infect A&M research.” A&M was awarded $50 million from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund (ETF) to create the National Center for Therapeutics Manufacturing (NCTM), a facility to do vaccine and drug therapy research.

The money had been transferred to the ETF from The Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF) which Perry has total control over. The TEF fund (funded by the unemployment trust fund) has long been characterized by critics as a taxpayer slush fund for Perry that is supposed to be used to attract businesses to Texas. The ETF pays for universities to partner with private businesses on technology development. Perry was criticized for moving the money from TEF to ETF to A&M without getting approval from the ETF fund board. Perry said because the funds originated in the TEF the board had no say.

According to Steffy, the move was controversial because the only two companies with Memorandums of Understanding had little value (one was in bankruptcy) and were both owned by major Perry fundraisers. The companies Introgen of Austin and Xoma Ltd. of Berkley, California partnered with A&M. Introgen was founded by Perry supporter David Nance and Xoma was the former employer of their new partner and Vice Chancellor for Research Brett Giroir, who according to Steffy holds five patents in conjunction with his old employer, Xoma. The deal like the Wind Alliance was to be “a far reaching alliance” to develop new technologies for commercial development.

Interestingly enough, for all of the “excitement” over the Wind Alliance and A&M’s development of Naval Station Ingleside, according to Port Commissioner (and A&M alumni) Ken Berry, A&M has not listed one dime in its budget for the development of the base, nor has there been any money forthcoming from any state government agency to help develop jobs at the facility. Whether Perry makes the “public/private partnerships” another way to deliver taxpayer funds to favored supporters remains to be seen, but what is clear is the priority of Perry’s boys at A&M is not producing jobs for the Coastal Bend.