Friday, Apr. 1, 2005

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College donor secrecy bill watered down

By JOHN MUNFORD
jmunford@TheCitizenNews.com

A House bill amended through the efforts of Fayette state Sen. Ronnie Chance won’t make all donations to Georgia colleges, universities and technical schools secret as previously proposed in the first bill passed by the House.

Critics said the original bill would keep citizens from determining if any person or business who contracts with the university system might be making donations in an effort to keep their business connection.

Chance, a member of the Senate’s Higher Education Committee, helped author the amendment that will make public all donations made by any person or business in which he or she has “a substantial interest” if that person or business does more than $10,000 in business with that particular institution.

The bill provides that a person shall be considered to have a “substantial interest” in a business if he or she directly or indirectly owns more than 25 percent of the assets or stock of the entity.

The bill also requires that any such donations be made public within three years of the date of the donation, Chance noted.

The amended bill passed the Senate and later passed the house this week after Speaker Glenn Richardson passed the deciding vote.

Chance said the passage of his amendment in both sides of the legislature was a good example of how the process works. In this case, the House passed the more strict bill, the Senate approved it with the amended language to soften the bill’s impact, and it went back to the House for the ultimate approval, leaving the bill awaiting the signature of Gov. Sonny Perdue.

The original bill had good intentions, Chance said. But the new one is a little better, he added.

“The public will be able to know what’s going on and see that nobody’s making donations with the expectations that they’re going to get contracts” with the state, Chance said.