Opinion: More law school meddling

A selection committee chose Orlando, not Tampa, as the preferred home for Florida A&M University's new law school. While local supporters are understandably disappointed, the decision, which now goes to the Board of Regents, is the first to have some basis in reason and legitimacy since FAMU's law school emerged as political pork. That's why lawmakers, including Sen. James Hargrett of Tampa and Rep. Rudy Bradley of St. Petersburg, should quit trying to pull strings to bring

FAMU to Tampa. Hargrett and Bradley are both involved in tough election campaigns and would like to turn the law school into a political plum, but the school should go where it best serves students, not politicians.

Gov. Jeb Bush and state lawmakers gave FAMU the go-ahead this year. The old law school at the predominantly black university was closed by the state in the 1960s. This year, with coffers flush and Republicans eager to court the black community, the Legislature gave FAMU a new one. So it is hollow for boosters in Tampa, Lakeland and Daytona Beach to complain that politics skewed Orlando's chance to land the school; politics created the school in the first place.

But the current meddling is more serious. Sen. John McKay, R-Bradenton, likely to be the next Senate president, implied his support for the school rested on FAMU's choosing Tampa. "It seems as though the whole process to date has been quite prejudicial against Tampa," McKay said. That's an overstatement. True, many alumni are still upset with the city's treatment of black fans during the years Tampa hosted the Florida Classic football game. But the other competing cities offered generous bids. The Orlando site, for example, could help redevelop a historically black community.

Tampa, ranked third by the site committee, after Orlando and Lakeland, offered an old police station downtown and at least $5-million in cash and other incentives. FAMU and the regents need cold facts, not political duress, to make an informed decision. Access for students, internship opportunities, the location, size and condition of school facilities -- these factors are relevant, not the wishes of the senate's shadow president.

And let's be real. The state wouldn't dream, not at McKay's direction, anyway, of tanking the FAMU law school a second time. Intervention by McKay or any other political leader at this decisive stage compounds the credibility problem the FAMU law school inherited from the start. What wrong is righted if the wishes of black educators and their supporters are ignored, if school facilities are second-best and if politics forces FAMU to burn bridges, harming the school's ability to recruit and place talented students?

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