Syracuse University has been spending less and less money in efforts to influence policy decisions in Washington, D.C.

The university’s spending on lobbying the federal government peaked in 2013 with a total of $300,000, records show. But since then, lobbying expenses in 2017 dropped to less than $50,000 — the lowest since 2000.

When asked about the decrease in spending, Chancellor Kent Syverud said the lobbying totals were “surprising” to him and he had “no idea” where the numbers were coming from. SU’s lobbying disclosures can be found through a query of a United States Senate database or a U.S. House of Representatives database.

In the last year, Syverud said the university has restructured its government relations team, which handles SU’s lobbying activity.

After the second quarter of 2017, SU switched its main lobbyist from Eric Persons to Tim Drumm. Persons had lobbied for the university since 2011.

“We’ve been doing a lot more interactive outreach with all levels of government, in the last year, than Syracuse has done in decades,” Syverud said.

In a December interview, Syverud said in the last six weeks of 2017 SU was “likely to exceed” spending from previous years, after the Republican Party’s tax plan moved through Congress. But SU reported less than $5,000 spent on federal lobbying for the fourth quarter of 2017. Fourth quarter reports were due on Jan. 22.

SU’s state and local lobbying report for July to December 2017 is still processing, so it’s unclear how much the university may have lobbied at that level. The state lobbying report for the first half of 2017 shows the university spent just over $2,200.

Compared to its peer institutions, SU is far behind in spending. Of SU’s 16 peer institutions, 14 of them have recently reported lobbying data. All of those colleges spent more on federal lobbying than SU did in 2017.

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Even when SU hit its 2013 peak in spending on federal lobbying, with Nancy Cantor as chancellor, five peer institutions still outspent the university by an average of about $212,000 more than SU’s $300,000 total.

One reason a university may change its lobbying philosophy is because it had a change in leadership, said Jim Post, a professor emeritus of management, markets, public policy and law at Boston University. Syverud became SU’s chancellor in 2014, following Cantor’s nearly 10-year tenure.

“Lobbying is very much a function of the leadership in the university and how those leaders … perceive the relationship between the university and the political world in either Albany, Washington or both,” Post said.

Overall, SU mostly lobbies lawmakers on higher education and veterans issues at the federal level. At the beginning of 2017, SU spent $20,000 on lobbying the Office of the President to support Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) students and “Dreamers.” Throughout the rest of 2017, the university also lobbied Congress on “teacher education policy,” “veterans service and care,” “federal tax reform legislation,” “veterans related programming” and “student visa issues.”

Universities are constantly competing against their peers in the economic and political markets to get funding for research and university projects, Post said. Lobbying is a way universities can have their interests and needs voiced to political actors, both at the federal and state levels, he said.

Post said he was surprised SU’s lobbying expenditures have been declining. He added that he would have expected them to remain flat or increase.

“For higher education in general … it’s been tough to get federal money, which has been largely flat-funded,” Post said. “In the state of New York, it’s been more generous in the past, but it’s a very competitive market.”

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Post said universities can “lobby” in other ways than spending money to influence policy decisions.

One strategy is utilize a university’s alumni base, and SU has a “very large and active” one, Post said. SU’s alumni network is composed of about 242,000 people in 160 different countries, according to the SU Alumni Association. The Washington, D.C. area is home to almost 15,000 SU alumni, making it the university’s second largest alumni base.

Alumni are mostly eager to help their alma mater do better and achieve its aspirations, Post said, so they will participate in grassroots programs. Alumni often voluntarily write letters, send messages and use social media to communicate the university’s needs to political actors, he said.

Friends of the university can also lobby for SU without necessarily spending money, Post said.

“They’re not technically alums and they’re not technically lobbyists, but they are advocates for Syracuse … who are especially interested in the economic development impact that Syracuse might have,” Post said.

At the forefront of SU’s lobbying activity, though, is Mike Haynie, vice chancellor for strategic initiatives and innovation. Haynie works with Drumm and others in the Office of Government and Community Relations to engage government officials.

Sometimes, Haynie said in an email, SU will consult experts on a particular issue or area of interest to help with the university’s lobbying process.

Syverud said part of the restructuring of SU’s lobbying process has been focused on building relationships with government officials rather than having “one-off complaints or requests for assistance.”

“I would emphasize that the effort this past year to do a study of our community engagement, to do a study of our economic impact, is related to that,” the chancellor added. Those studies were spearheaded by Haynie and Vice President of Community Engagement Bea González.

While SU has been spending less on lobbying in the past few years, Haynie said university officials have taken “significant steps to affect positive change to the benefit of our students, faculty, staff and the University as a whole.” He added that the Office of Government and Community Relations is “much stronger and more effective” now that it has been restructured and reorganized.

Haynie said evidence of SU’s lobbying successes include the securing of support for the National Veterans Resource Complex, a $62.5 million project, and how recent federal tax reform legislation did not include initially-proposed provisions that would have hurt the university financially.

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Now, one of the main lobbying issues for SU is the proposed 2018-19 New York state budget, which could eliminate all new Bundy Aid funding to New York’s private colleges and universities, Haynie said. Bundy Aid is used to supplement financial assistance for students, he added, so the university’s lobbying efforts will be focused on restoring Bundy Aid to the final state budget.

With President Donald Trump’s administration, Syverud said SU has had more of a dramatic change in its lobbying procedures than with past presidential administration changes. This is because, “all sorts of conventional methods of government decision-making and government process are very different under the Trump administration than they ever have been,” he said.

One example of this change, the chancellor said, is the university’s engagement with government officials. Since many agencies still have unfilled positions, SU has had to adjust its points of contact within the federal government, including some “significant funding sources (SU) works with,” Syverud said.

Published on January 31, 2018 at 1:40 am

Contact Sara: smswann@syr.edu | @saramswann