I’d wager that at least one of his staff members is responsible for his clippings and recording his appearances, and probably booking his speaking engagements. Again, not a misuse of funds but a testament to ego.

And Prof. Sabato? It’s much better to respond to apparently well-founded accusations yourself, with facts, than to have a lackey attempt to blow smoke up our butts.

A rather interesting example is

“These funds are never available for the general use or general operation of the Center for Politics or any other program but the Youth Leadership Initiative.”

Which strictly speaking is true, but that does not mean a portion of the money from the DoEd was not washed, cleaned and channeled to the CfP. Universities have overhead rates that are charged on direct costs. That money, once collected, has no limitations on it. They also have policies that return a portion of the direct costs to the organization that has the grant. For the Center for Politics this is an astounding 70%

http://www.virginia.edu/finance/finanalysis/Distribution%20Percents.html

Something that Larry probably negotiated when the manna fell from heaven.

F&A is usually charged on modified direct costs, everything except equipment, stipends and tuition. In practice this means ~3/4 of the total direct costs. UVa’s F&A (facilities and administrative aka overhead rate is ~52% OTOH, DoEd has a limit of 8% total direct costs on F&A. In that case CfA got over 500K$ of pretty much unrestricted money to play with over the years this earmark ran. If they were charging at the 52% rate, it was certainly much more.

http://www.research.vcu.edu/osp/whatrate.htm

Someone needs to do an FOA on the budget in the proposal. DoEd will probably black it out as proprietary, but UVa is still subject to state FoA rules AFAIK (Whether UVa is still a state university is another one of those interesting questions).

In other words, he’s not a professor at all. He’s a crony.

And I recognize the tepid wit of Washington Post columnist-for-life Richard Cohen.

(1) The Center for Politics was awarded $7 million dollars as an earmark, entirely because of former Rep. Virgil Goode. This grant was not awarded as the result of a competitive process with peer review, the normal procedure.

(2) Whether Sabato is getting paid directly isn’t unimportant, but it’s not the whole story. His grant pays the expenses of running his center (via university overhead); and allowed him to grow his center’s budget by $1 million yearly, which meant he could supervise 10-20 more staff. Maybe everything these staff were doing was pursuant to the grant’s aims of youth education, but in the real world that’s typically not the case.

Everyone in a bureaucracy wants to build a bigger empire with more people working for them — and academia is no exception, because the more staff you have, the easier it is to accomplish your research goals.

Normally, peer review is the check on abuse, because if your product is bad, your grants don’t get funded and your papers don’t get published, your empire will fall. Earmarks like this subvert the system, which can allow corrupt research to flourish.

I don’t doubt that Sabato is striving to be an accurate political observer, but in this case it looks like he let friendship — or the wishes of his donor Virgil Goode — get in the way of accuracy. And that’s exactly the risk of this earmarking system.

I hope in the future he recuses himself, or improves his disclosure, when Virgil Goode and Cordel Faulk are the topics of discussion.

Congressional funds designated for this program are accompanied by a host of federal regulations, all implemented and monitored by the U.S. Department of Education. To receive Congressionally designated funding for the Youth Leadership Initiative, the Center for Politics is required to submit a detailed grant application first to the Unveristy’s Office of Sponsored Programs and then to the U.S. Department of Education. Only after that application is approved by the the US Department of Education are the funds available for use by the program. All usage is strictly governed by federal regulations and the parameters of the approved application. These funds are never available for the general use or general operation of the Center for Politics or any other program but the Youth Leadership Initiative. Additionally, since the Center for Politics is a unit of the University of Virginia, once a grant application is approved, all spending and procurement of goods and services related to the approved grant application are governed by, and subject to state and University procurement regulations. The entire proces is managed by the University’s central Office of Procurement.

As required by the US Department of Education, the Center for Politics discloses on our website that the Youth Leadership Initiative is funded by the United States Congress. In addition, we also note that the Youth Leadership Initiative is also supported by state funding and by private donors. This disclaimer statement is featured in the upper right area of the front page of the Youth Leadership Initiative section of the Center’s website http://www.centerforpolitics.org or http://www.youthleadership.net.

Professor Sabato is the Director of the Center for Politics, but receives no salary from the Center for Politics. He is a University professor who reports directly to the President of the University. He is not a paid employee of the Center.

Internally at Center for Politics, accounting responsibilities are executed and overseen by a Chief Financial Officer who reports to the Chief of Staff of the Center. Professor Sabato does not administer the allocations or expenditures of the federal and state funds designated for this program. As noted above, these are governed by federal, state and University regulations. Contrary to what may be assumed, these funds are never “received” into a University bank account. Instead, the funding is made available from the U.S. Department of Education as a draw-down account. The funds remain with the Department of Education and are drawn down only on approval by the University’s Office of Procurement in a manner consistent with the initial federal grant application. These federal funds are not available, nor would it be approved, for the general operation of the Center for Politics or other programs such as the Center’s Crystal Ball.

In addition to the disclosure on our website, Congressional funding for the Center for Politics’ Youth Leadership Initiative has been reported by scores of media outlets throughout Virginia and around the nation. Presently, the program serves nearly 50,000 teachers, providing instructional resources that reach millions of students across the nation and around the world.

Greg:  … the ways in which the lines slowly get blurred in Washington… interests of incumbents and DC [wheels]… reinforce each other.

You’re sounding a bit jaded, yourself, Greg

Need a quote?
Do not tarry.
Call U V A.
And ask for Larry!