Maybe it's time to consider privatizing major colleges' athletic enterprises

As long as the University of Oregon wants to act like a private company where athletics are concerned, maybe the Legislature ought to make it official and turn the athletic department into a private enterprise.

The university refuses to disclose how much it is being paid under a new athletics marketing contract. The office of Attorney General Hardy Myers has agreed with the university. The AG rejected a request by the Portland Oregonian that the payments be disclosed under the Oregon Public Records Act.

"The state has an economic interest in maximizing payments made to its universities pursuant to sports marketing contracts,'' the AG's opinion said. "Would-be contractors who know exactly what the UO or OSU agreed to accept in the past might offer less than they otherwise would have offered.''

By that reasoning, none of the contracts made by public bodies in Oregon - from individual small fire districts and city governments to the giant Department of Transportation - should be open to public inspection.

After all, all public agencies have an interest in maximizing their revenue and minimizing their expenses.

And since their contract terms now are public, would-be suppliers always know what the public agency was willing to pay the last time a similar deal was up for bids.

The university in Eugene just got legislative approval for $200 million in state bonds to help build a new basketball arena, said to be the most expensive in the country. The bonds are to be paid off from revenue only, and everybody who has studied this seems to believe that no public funds will ever be necessary to bail the project out. (Nobody ever seems to ask why a state university in a smallish state needs to spend $200 million on an arena.) But if the public never needs to be involved, why do they need state-backed bonds?

The answer is that issuing state bonds is less expensive for the borrower, the university in this case, because they are backed by the state's power to raise revenue, through taxes if necessary, if other revenue falls short. So the university is happy to rely on state support, but it's not willing to let the public know what it's raking in as payments under its new marketing deal. And now the state AG says that's just fine.

It's another example of how the Public Records Act can be interpreted in a way that turns it into an Official Secrets Act.

OK, let's just keep this in mind the next time the Oregon University System moans about insufficient public support of the state colleges' budgets.

If the athletic deals are outside the scope of public scrutiny, it might be time for legislation separating athletics from the public parts of the public university system.

Under such an arrangement, the major sports at our big state universities could become private companies.

They could be licensed to use the names and logos of the schools, and they could lease the sites for their games. That revenue could then, as now, support all the sports that remain part of higher education, from crew and gymnastics to wrestling.

Then there would be no more raised eyebrows about secret marketing deals, the cost of arenas or what the coaches get paid.

(hh)