Wednesday, August 20, 1986
Campus/Area
University Daily Kansan
15
Lobbies change grant system
United Press International
WASHINGTON — Universities are paying lobbyists up to $50,000 a month to avoid the standard competitive review process by helping secure millions of research and development dollars from Congress, public records show.
S spurred by the lobbying, House and Senate members have interceded in the traditional grant award system — a competitive review by panels of university or government scientists — to aid their alma matters in obtaining hefty awards.
In 1985, for example, Sen. Allonse D'Amato, R-N.Y., attempted to procure nearly a third of a $90 million defense research program budget for Syracuse University, where he earned both his undergraduate and law degrees.
In a more recent case of academic politicizing, several senators, including Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole banded together to win passage June 26 of a bill ordering the Pentagon to pass $55 million in scientific research money to nine select universities.
Of that figure, $36.6 million will be used for a new library at Northwestern University and academic buildings at Syracuse and the Rochester Institute of Technology, despite a law that requires Defense Department programs to fulfill military purposes.
Critics say such lobbying tactics and congressional intervention are undermining the traditional competitive process for assuring that the best-qualified researchers win
grants, although the vast majority of the $65 billion the government awards annually is distributed competitively.
"Professionals in the field are in the best position to judge (scientific quality) - certainly better than members of Congress," said Robert Rosenzweig, president of the Association of American Universities, a group of the nation's largest research universities.
Under pressure to compete on the political front, 12 of 57 members of Rosenzweig's association have bypassed the review process since 1983 and five are clients of Cassidy and Associates, a firm that lobbies Congress for universities' interests.
Asked about his push for Syracuse, a D'Amato spokesman said, "For someone to stand up and say the elected representatives of the people should not have a say in where the tax dollars are spent, that's wrong."
On the Senate floor recently, Sen. John Danforth, R-Mo., complained that universities had become "organizations that apply to lobbyists, pay lobbyists, lobby the Congress, just like anyone else."
Reports to the House clerk's office show 11 of 16 universities that appear likely to escape competitive review and receive up to $110 million in two new congressional appropriations bills, have hired Washington lobbying firms. Six of the schools retained Cassidy and Associates.
The firm's employees include ex-staffers for influential members of Congress, including House Speaker Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, D-Mass., and past presidents of Indiana University and the University of Alabama. Both
universities are among seven schools allotted non-competitive grants under the fiscal 1987 Energy Appropriations bill.
D'Amato tried in 1985 to secure nearly $30 million for Syracuse from a $90 million, fiscal 1966 budget for a new Pentagon research program that had been designed to assure competitive review of all awards.
A congressional source said concerns about D'Amato's attempt and the June 26 bill contributed to a decision by the House and Senate Armed Services committees to parde the defense program to $50 million in 1987.
The June bill requires the Pentagon, which already had chosen certain schools for 1986 research grants and may have delivered the money, to give eight of the nine selected universities $35 million of its 1986 research budget.
However, the bill's language also requires universities to use grant money for research.
Since 1971, the Mansfield Amendment — passed in the wake of Vietnam War abuses — also has required the defense secretary to assure that Pentagon awards bear "a potential relationship to a military function or operation."
A Northeastern University spokesman said $13.5 million in Pentagon money awarded for engineering research would be used for a university library.
A Rochester Institute spokesman said $11.1 million would go mainly for academic services, which he asserted fulfilled the defense mission because some students would work someday for defense contractors.
Surgery department gets chairman
By Karen Samelson
An internationally known surgeon will become the new chairman of the department of surgery at the University of Kansas Medical Center, Executive Vice Chancellor D. Kay Clawson announced in July.
The surgeon, Laurence Y. Cheung, 42, will replace Frank W. Masters as chairman in December. Masters will step down from his administrative position but will continue to teach.
Although Cheung will not begin his official duties until Dec. 1, he spends a few days at the Med Center every other week to work with Masters and to get to know the department.
"I'm so excited about it," he said Monday. "I'm more excited about it now than when I accepted the job."
Cheung is professor of surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and chief of surgery at the St. Louis Veterans Administration Center.
He received his medical degree in 1968 from the National Defense Medical Center in Taiwan. He completed an internship at Holy Cross Hospital in Salt Lake City and a residency at the University of Utah Medical Center before going on to Washington University in 1977.
Cheung, who specializes in gastrointestinal surgery, said he felt good about KU's resources, surgery department and staff.
faculty.
As chairman, Cheung plans to oversee the education of graduate and post-graduate students and to stimulate more research among the
Cheng will also continue to work with patients and will encourage faculty to be more active in the hospital.
"It is very critical that I do see patients and operate," he said, stressing the need to be a role model for students.
Cheung said his salary had not been established, but it would be comparable to his salary at Washington University.
His wife, Lola, is even more excited about the move, he said, in part because of the quality of the Shawnee Mission School District in Kansas City, Kan. The Cheungs have two children, ages 8 and 12.
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