[THEGrid] THEGrid Lobbying Advice

[Jae Yu]

    Hi Larry,

    This message contains exactly the kind of information
    we'd need to know in order for us to talk to our upper
    administration effectively.   I was just wondering how
    did the story got tangled so that we all thought (and I
    think HiPCAT thinks the same) that Lt. Gov. is holding
    the money.  This is makes the entire strategy very different
    as you pointed out.   Did you convey this information
    to HiPCAT management?

    Jae

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Pinsky, Lawrence S." <pinsky at uh.edu>
To: <thegrid at highenergy.phys.ttu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 2:56 PM
Subject: [THEGrid] THEGrid Lobbying Advice


> THEGridders:
>
>          At the meeting last week I took it as an action item to
> investigate the "Lobbying" situation and advise the other members as to
how
> they might proceed on their own campuses.
>          Idiscovered several things.
>
> First:  The Lt. Gov. is not really the stumbling block on the $10M
> appropriation for the Backbone infrastructure money.  The actual problem
is
> that no source of funds was identified by the Legislature, so it can be
> spent, it has to exist.  The real problem is priorities for various pots
of
> money, and apparently the Universities themselves are part of the problem
> in the sense that to do something now before the next Legislature meets,
> someone or some other program would have to be shortchanged by the
> necessary $10M and there is no agreement on just who or what should
> suffer.  The crux of the problem is that the funding for this should have
> come from other than the Higher Education Support funds, like for example
> the economic development monies, of which there are $100M's appropriated
> and doled out to various other special interests.  Getting those funds
> indicated would relieve us from having to take from other scarce
University
> programs to buy Texas into the new high speed backbones.
>          In fact, I suggest that assuming that the current diverse
attempts
> to find a solution fail that we plan to push that agenda item through
> HipCAT and our local University Government Relations people for the next
> Legislative session in the coming Spring.
>          The idea of a general Matching fund based on the Economic
> Development monies has apparently been broached before with no
> success.  Part of the problem has been our age-old nemisis of competition
> between the have and have-nots amongst the state universities in Texas.
By
> "have' I mean the PUF.  While the PUF might be usable for such things, the
> UT and A&M administrations are against it, and prefer to join in on an
> attempt to do it through other monies like the Economic Development
> monies.  So far so good.  But the problem has been "earmarking," in the
> sense that the majority of the past proposals were set up to protect the
> amounts of that money to benefit UT and A&M with only "crumbs" available
> for the other state institutions.  In this case, schools that are part of
> the UT or A&M system like UTA were under the tent, so to speak, but for
> example TT and UH were not, and so not surprisingly were not strong
supporters.
>          What we need to do is find a way to move beyond that past
attitude
> (if that is possible) and try and attain our two goals of 1.) getting the
> Infrastructure monies released and 2.) setting up a truly universal
> matching fund system that any or all of us can take advantage of on a more
> or less equal basis.
>          To do that, we each need to approach our local Government
> Relations people.  I suggest that the best route is to go through the VP
> for Research (or equivalent) on each campus, as that person's support is
> essential.  As a first step, you should contact the VP Research and
arrange
> a meeting.  Bringing the HipCAT Lead with you is also a good idea (or at
> least have him or her a priori on-board philosophically if their personal
> attendance is not possible).  The purposes of the meeting are several
> fold.  1.) Review for them the structure of HipCAT and the role of
THEGrid,
> along with our plans for a demo grid and our willingness to participate in
> support of the Government Relations efforts from each campus.  2.) Stress
> the fact that this is a grass-roots movement from the local Physics
> Departments that (hopefully) will be pretty comprehensive over all the
> Research Universities in the state.  3.) Go over our agenda in the sense
of
> the stated priorities above, and try and assess the attitude of your
> administration for the mechanisms of support.  The hope is that we can
> ultimately find some common ground among them so that we can present a
> united front to the Legislature next Spring.
>          Generally, I expect all of the administrations (VP Research, Gov.
> Relations,) to be supportive in principle of our goals, and sympathetic to
> our cause.  However, they will all have what they perceive as the best
> overall interests in their own institution in mind, and will be reluctant
> to give up anything else in any other area to support such an
> initiative.  That is the current state of affairs with respect to the $10M
> that the Lt. Gov. needs to know who is going to give up what to make it
> happen...  If we can find a "win-win" scenario, like using economic
> development funds to do this instead of re-directed higher education
money,
> then that might be a solution.  Of course, the current recipients of the
> Economic Development "largesse" will not be happy to see us coming,
either...
>          Well, this message is way too long already, but it should give
you
> enough to get started.  I suggest that in each case where such meetings
> take place, that you write up a short synopsis of what you learned and
> email it to the Executive Committee for coordination.
>
>                                          Larry
>
>
>
> **************************************
> Professor Lawrence S. Pinsky, Esq.
> Chairperson
> Physics Department
> University of Houston
> Houston, Texas 77204-5005
>
> Attorney at Law
>
> Tel.    +1 713 743 3552
> Fax     +1 713 743 3589
> Email: pinsky at uh.edu
> **************************************
>
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