Another last straw

Attorney General Andrew Ketterer advised them not to pay it. Gov. Angus King asked them not to pay it. So when Maine Educational Loan Authority board members met Thursday to consider a $204,000 bill for lobbying and public relations, they voted, naturally, to pay it.

In the great scheme of things, it’s just one more thumb in the public’s eye by the tangled trio of state-supported student loan organizations – Maine Educational Services, Maine Education Loan Marketing Corp., Maine Educational Loan Authority (MES/MELMAC/MELA). Just one more arrogant rebuke to the state’s elected officials and constitutional officers. Just one more last straw.

The bill was submitted by MES, the private nonprofit that has exclusive administration and marketing contracts with MELA and MELMAC, the two state-created nonprofits with nearly exclusive access to the federally capped tax-exempt bonds Maine devotes to making college more affordable for Maine students. The lobbying and PR in question occurred while the last Legislature was considering reform to reassert some measure of state control over those precious state resources.

This was no ordinary lobbying and PR, though. It was full-tilt, gloves-off personal attack and character assassination against anyone – including lawmakers and state officials – who dared question these organizations, who had the gall to demand accountability, the nerve to wonder if these tax-exempt bonds were producing the lowest cost student loans possible or bankrolling MES’ numerous for-profit spin-offs.

The result of that lobbying and PR was mixed. MELA still got a taste of the bond allocation, but a law was passed providing more state supervision.

The law took effect yesterday. MELMAC believes it beat lawmakers to the punch with a dark-of-night sale in late June of its $504 million in assets to the Nebraska for-profit NELnet. That deal was completed only after stops for incorporation in Nevada and Delaware, states that take great pride in shielding corporate records from the prying public.

MELA took the more direct approach. It voted in May to pay this questionable bill – the question being whether a state-supported agency can lobby the legislature. It got a second chance to do the right thing when it was pointed that the May vote, taken with no advance public notice, was likely a violation of the state Right to Know law. That second chance came Thursday and MELA blew it by a vote of 4-2, despite new evidence that it never actually authorized the MES lobbying and PR campaign.

The two board members who voted against the payment deserve praise. Bruce Schatz, a new member, clearly comes in with a sense that accountability is a higher priority than self-preservation. State Treasurer Dale McCormack was a particular target of the ugly PR campaign and she continues to stand up to it. The four who voted to pay – Wendy Ault, Walter Moulton, Ronald Milliken and David Brown – did so at the last meeting before their terms expire. They will not be missed.

The money, however, will. Lawmakers and the public can only guess how many millions have gone into MES’s for-profit ventures, high salaries and plush offices that could have gone to getting more Maine kids through college. Now they have a definite number to ponder – $204,000 would pay for a lot of credit hours.