NC lawmakers quietly insert tuition break for sports booster groups into budget

State legislators are trying again to save college sports programs and booster clubs millions of dollars by reducing tuition for scholarship athletes.

While the idea passed the state House as a standalone bill in 2019, this year senators have tucked the legislation into their 427-page budget bill, where it’s attracted little attention and discussion. The provision would give in-state tuition to out-of-state UNC System athletes.

Rep. Jon Hardister, R-Guilford, has argued that the tuition break would help athletic recruitment at smaller schools such as UNC-Greensboro, and would mirror the in-state tuition offered for academic scholarship programs.

But Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, opposes the tuition break, which she says would mostly benefit well-heeled booster clubs like the Rams Club at UNC-Chapel Hill.

According to an estimate from legislative staff on the 2019 bill, the change would cost the university system about $16 million in tuition revenue. About half of the UNC System’s out-of-state scholarship athletes were at UNC-Chapel Hill, N.C. State and East Carolina during the 2017-2018 year.

Other schools had a much lower number of out-of-state athletic scholarships; two historically Black institutions, Elizabeth City State and Fayetteville State, had none, according to the fiscal note.

Harrison said she’s “not surprised” to see the tuition break resurface.

“Now that we got this extra money (in the budget), there’s more of an appetite to reinstate it,” she said, adding that she might be OK with the idea if the break was limited to smaller universities that couldn’t otherwise afford the scholarships.

Both in 2019 and now, the tuition break is backed by a nonprofit called the N.C. Job Creators Forum, which has retained five lobbyists from two different firms to push its agenda at the legislature.

Mike Rusher, a former Republican Party staffer who’s now a public affairs consultant, serves as president of Job Creators Forum. He said the tuition break could help UNC System sports programs recover from a difficult COVID-19 year with few fans in attendance.

“The swift, post pandemic recovery of our university athletic programs at schools of all sizes is more important now than it ever has been before, so we must equip our schools and sports programs with every available tool in the toolbox,” he said in an email.

The tuition break first appeared this year as a separate bill, Senate Bill 140, filed in February by Sen. Ralph Hise, R-Mitchell and one of the Senate’s budget writers. Sens. Joyce Waddell, D-Mecklenburg, and Paul Lowe, D-Forsyth, signed on as co-sponsors.

The bill has never received a committee hearing, but that’s common for proposals seeking inclusion in the budget bill.

Now that the Senate has approved a budget proposal, the House is working to put out its own plan.

The tuition break isn’t a new idea: it was in effect from 2005 until 2010, when it was eliminated as state leaders looked to make recession-era budget cuts.

For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at link.chtbl.com/underthedomenc or wherever you get your podcasts.

This story was originally published July 2, 2021 at 9:00 AM with the headline "NC lawmakers quietly insert tuition break for sports booster groups into budget."