SUNY-Buffalo president’s secret deal for Hillary (firestorm over her 6-figure speaking fees at public colleges)

[mountaineer]

SUNY-Buffalo president’s secret deal for Hillary
By Kieran Michael Lalor
July 12, 2014 | 6:10am
NY Post

A public university is a public trust: Administrators have a duty to be open and honest about how they’re using resources so that taxpayers, tuition payers, the press and lawmakers can see that the spending is going to provide a quality education at an affordable price.

But Satish Tripath, the president of SUNY-Buffalo, seems to think he’s above all that.

A firestorm has erupted surrounding former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s six-figure speaking fees at public colleges around the country.

UConn paid her $250,000 while raising tuition 6.5 percent; U. Nevada-Las Vegas is hiking tuition 17 percent over four years as Clinton is set to get a $225,000 honorarium.

We know that Clinton was paid to speak last year at SUNY-Buffalo, but that’s where the transparency ends.

Tripath is hiding behind a technicality: The school’s $600 million private foundation paid Clinton, so (he argues) there’s no requirement to make her fee public. The foundation, Tripath claims, is even impervious to the Freedom of Information Act.

Funny: After ex-President Bill Clinton spoke at SUNY-Buffalo in 2002, the school had no problem announcing that he’d “graciously” chosen to waive his $125,000 honorarium. When the news benefits the school, it doesn’t mind disclosing.

It is flagrantly disingenuous for Tripath to pretend these are separate entities: The foundation wouldn’t exist but for the school, and Tripath is a a member of the foundation’s board. He can clearly steer donations to whichever “box” suits him.

In short, Tripath is choosing secrecy over transparency.

There’s more: Last year when bipartisan legislation was introduced in the Legislature to require SUNY foundations to disclose under FOIL, the SUNY-Buffalo foundation paid the same lobbying firm that represents the university $10,000 a month to fight it off.

Nice: Use your secret funds to protect your veil of secrecy.

SUNY foundations around the state have $1.8 billion in assets, with SUNY-Buffalo’s holding a third of that total. When the foundation spends exorbitant amounts to bring in guest speakers, it means taxpayers and tuition payers will be making up the difference elsewhere.

The foundations don’t face the competitive-bid requirements that SUNY itself does, opening the door to cronyism and conflicts of interest involving money that is supposed to go toward public education.

But the “foundation game” is at work on both ends of the Clinton speech. After Secretary Clinton started taking a public-relations beating for playing poor while getting rich off money intended for education, she announced that she gives her speaking fees to the Clinton Global Initiative.

Hah! Both Politico and The New York Times have reported that the Clinton Global Initiative is effectively the 2016 Clinton campaign in waiting: The “charity” keeps their team intact and allows the Clintons to jet-set and network with the rich and famous, keeping their campaign donor-base close and their profile and glamour quotient high.

Given the political nature of the Clinton Global Initiative, a state university filtering money intended to provide an affordable education to the organization seems wildly inappropriate.

With escalating costs making college a financial impossibility for too many New Yorkers, public universities must be judicious with every tax, tuition and charitable dollar they receive.

Transparency is the public’s way of checking to make sure they’re doing so.

But transparency won’t be enough. We deserve a serious cost-benefit analysis of all public colleges’ fees paid to celebrity speakers from the world of entertainment, media and politics — does the educational value justify the expense?

My gut says high-profile speakers are much more about bragging rights and photo-ops for college administrators than they are about providing a marketable degree at the lowest possible cost.

Kieran Michael Lalor (R) represents Dutchess County in the state Assembly.

[Oceander]

students should protest at Clinton's chat.

[Fishrrman]

I've mentioned this before, I'll say it again:

This is nothing more than a way for Hillary and Bill to "launder" money into their personal fortunes, courtesy of the left.

Hillary ought to be passing out copies of "How To Win Friends And Influence People" to the big shots who attend (and "contribute" to) her speeches...