Posted on: Wednesday, June 9, 2004

EDITORIAL
UH should not lose purchasing autonomy

There may be good reasons to standardize and rationalize the rules governing state "procurement," that is, purchase of goods and services.

But a bill aimed at this goal is fatally flawed in at least one respect. It pulls the University of Hawai'i back into the state's centralized procurement system. It took years, and a constitutional amendment approved by the voters, to grant UH "autonomy" from such rules.

To reverse this important piece of the autonomy puzzle would be a major step backward for the university and its efforts to direct its own growth.

The idea behind granting UH independent privileges not available to other state departments was to free it to become more "entrepreneurial" and more flexible in the management of its resources.

Before autonomy, if UH wanted, for instance, to buy a new computer system, it would have to process the request through the state's centralized purchasing office. This inevitably caused delays and prevented the university from making flexible decisions about, say, whether to buy or lease the equipment.

Since the university raises a large share of its overall budget through tuition, grants and independent fund-raising, the theory was that it should have the freedom to spend that money as it sees fit.

Of course, standard good-practice rules of purchasing should apply just as they do to any government agency.

But this goes too far.

Gov. Linda Lingle should veto this measure and ask the Legislature to come back with a version that accomplishes some of the virtues of standardization without damaging university autonomy.