Monsees' Millions: Matt Blunt's $15 Million MOHELA Slush Fund

Governor Matt Blunt­ has billed the sale of assets from MOHELA --the state's student loan authority-- as a plan to enhance education through new capital projects on college campuses, but the political motivations underlying the initiative are inescapable. 

Consider, for example, that the MOHELA appropriation legislation reveals that fifteen million of the dollars generated by the sale would go into a small, loosely overseen non-profit corporation controlled by Blunt's GOP crony Rob Monsees --the same man who brought the MOHELA sale to the Governor to begin with while employed as a deputy chief of staff in his office. 

Those $15 million are being directed into sixteen "projects" controlled by the Missouri Technology Corporation --of which Rob Monsees serves as executive director-- most or all of which are reportedly unknown to at least some members of the Missouri Technology Corporation's board of directors.  Given that the legislation also provides for "100% flexibility" between projects for the appropriated funds, Monsees would have broad latitude to reapportion the funds into projects he favors. 

With carte blanche to use millions of dollars on projects to "commercialize research" at state schools, the potential is manifest for Monsees or Blunt to engage in inappropriate self-dealing or kickback schemes with moneyed business interests who seek to profit from the projects.  There is a very real risk that, beyond "commercializing research," Monsees might commercialize his own position and plenary power.

The current version of House Bill 16 is the vehicle for the appropriation of funds that would be raised via the passage of Senate Bill 389, which sells off portions of MOHELA's assets.  The bill includes the following appropriation line items at the end of its text:

Section 16.190. To the Department of Economic Development
For the Missouri Technology Corporation for the attraction and retention of high technology companies and commercialization of existing research being conducted in Missouri. This appropriation may be used for the following projects:

Missouri Power Resource Center ($200,000),
High Tech Small Business Development Incentive Program ($1,250,000), Animal Health & Nutrition Center ($200,000),
Animal Health Workforce Development Initiative ($175,000),
MTC Entrepreneur Pipeline Program ($1,500,000),
Plant and Ag Biotech Seed Capital Co-Investment Fund ($1,500,000),
Intellectual Property Management Fund ($1,100,000),
Medical Device Innovation Program ($350,000),
St. Louis Information Technology Initiatives ($1,000,000),
Opportunity Fund for Bioenergy Research Center/National Bio and Agro-defense Facility ($3,250,000),
AgBio Outreach Program ($125,000),
High Tech Marketing Promotion Fund ($350,000),
Emerging Firms Mapping Project ($50,000),
Missouri Open Innovation Network ($250,000),
Collaborations and Inter-disciplinary Degree Programs for Masters and PhDs Students ($350,000)
AgBiotech Company Recruitment Fund ($3,350,000)

provided that a hundred percent (100%) flexibility is allowed between each project
From Lewis and Clark Discovery Fund. . .. . . .$15,000,000

Try to find data and information on any or all of these projects and programs if you'd like, but don't waste your entire evening.  Few if any None of them exist.  They are programs that Rob Monsees at the Missouri Technology Corporation (perhaps with some helpful guidance from policy geniuses at the Department of Economic Development like Spence Jackson) will presumably create from whole cloth.

So exactly how, I wonder, will Monsees' Missouri Technology Corporation choose to spend its $3.3-plus million appropriated for recruiting "AgBiotech" companies?  However he decides, I'm sure it will be fun.  And pricey.  And Monsees may even get a cush post-MTC gig out of the deal.

And the "Missouri Power Resource Center"?  Ten dollars gets you a nickel that Andy Blunt's Mid-Missouri Biofuels and Show Me Ethanol buddies are among the "power resources" that the center winds up touting.

But all cheekiness aside, this appropriation represents a gross capitulation of oversight on the part of the legislature.  Whereas each of the other appropriations in the bill --whatever you think of the silliness of jeopardizing college affordability to make it-- is at least specifically tailored to a particular use on a particular campus, minimizing the opportunity for misuse, the Missouri Technology Corporation appropriations are just tossed out to vaguely named projects untethered to anything tangible or real or accountable. 

The implication is that we should simply expect that an actor with proven political motivations will make rational and broadly beneficial judgments on how to pass the dollars out.  Add in the 100% flexibility allowed among the projects, which makes the line item appropriation amounts essentially meaningless, and you've got a recipe for gross abuse.

It also represents another unseemly and politically motivated power grab on the part of Matt Blunt, who has yet to pass up the chance to fatten any vehicle with patronage lard. Missourians have been given not one hint of a reason in any act Governor Blunt has ever taken to make them think that this appropriation is anything but what it appears on every level to be: a gift to political allies and big-business patrons paid for out of the pockets of students who need loans to go to college. 

Governor Blunt undoubtedly feels the need to make good on some of the millions of dollars that contributors have pumped into his campaign by doling out state goodies.  Selling MOHELA and giving some of the proceeds to Rob Monsees so that he may parcel them out to benefactors is a particularly horrendous means of doing so, even by this administration's nonexistent standards.