Washington Lobbyist Reaps Contracts and Controversy

WASHINGTON—Two years ago, having decided to create a microelectronics center to help the area's sagging economy, the Rochester Institute of Technology realized it needed additional funds for construction and equipment. Its president, M. Richard Rose, contacted the Washington lobbying firm of Cassidy and Associates. Last summer Congress specified that $11.1 million from the Defense Department's budget go to the institute for a variety of purposes, including the new center. Today, smocked students are making chips in the clean rooms of the facility. Cassidy is the most well-known and, by all accounts, most successful of the firms that have taken up academia's urgent pleas for new research facilities. In doing so, they have fanned the flames of the debate over the propriety of "pork-barrel" politics in science, the process by which schools obtain federal money for facilities without any review of the scientific merits of their requests. The firm was created in 1975 as Schlossberg, Cassidy and Associates. (Kenneth Schlossberg left in 1984.) Tufts University was an early—and satisfied—client, obtaining $10 million from Congress in 1977 for a veterinary school and $21 million in 1979 for a human nutrition research center. To date, the firm takes credit for helping to obtain $165 million worth of facilities for university clients. Unquestionably, the academic community is in the midst of an infrastructure crisis. Science officials have estimated that up to $14 billion is needed to upgrade existing research facilities and build new ones. Yet Cassidy and Associates has drawn heavy fire for its approach, which Robert Rosenzweig of the American Association of Universities says "risks undermining the whole basis of decision-making in research funding. Gerald Cassidy, president of Cassidy and Associates, thinks that AAU's concerns are more pecuniary than it cares to admit. "[The peer-review system] is an old boy's network, pure and simple," he says. "What really upsets the AAU is that there is going to be more competition in the future for research dollars." AAU represents 54 of the country's most prominent research universities, whose presidents have recently agreed to a moratorium on seeking building funds earmarked for their institutions. Though acrimonious, the controversy hasn't hurt Cassidy's business. He won't discuss fees, but they are reputed to be steep: $20,000 a month, with three-year contracts the norm. Cassidy collects antiques, many of which grace the firm's spacious suite of offices near the Treasury Building in downtown Washington. The Waiting room is punctuated by an arrangement of brilliant silk flowers and a silver tea service. Creative Approaches The firm's lobbying for facilities gets the most press, but Cassidy estimates that it consumes only about a quarter of the firm's time. The firm also represents its 24 university clients on tax issues and student aid, and lobbies to increase the budgets of government agencies that give money to clients. Aside from legislative efforts, the firm also tries to spot trends in the distribution of federal funds. "Because of the resources we have, we're able to come up with a pretty good idea of where the federal dollar will be spent and point our universities in that direction. We also give them a creative approach to securing those research dollars," explained Cassidy. Cassidy is protective of the firm's reputation for competence and success. "We've walked away from a number of projects," he says. (The street goes both ways, however: at least one university client said thanks, but no thanks, to Cassidy's fees.) The firm does extensive research before taking on a new client. It digs up articles written about the institution in recent years, combs through agency reports to find out how much grant money each of its departments has received, and calculates the institution's success in procuring grants. Then Cassidy sends the university an extensive questionnaire that probes its budget, corporate benefactors, investments (including undeveloped land owned by the institution), and the political connections of administrators, alumni, faculty and even students The company studies course catalogues, promotional brochures, student publications, long-range plans and a demographic profile of the students. The questionnaire helps an institution conduct a self-assessment, says Cassidy—to learn, for example, if its success ratio has dropped or if a department with distinguished senior faculty is failing to attract the discipline's rising stars. When Cassidy sits down with an institution's administrators, he is wary of unrealistic expectations. "I don't want to sell them hot air," he says. He leans forward, imitating the classic huckster: "You're right! You don't have any good people, and it looks pretty dim from our point of view, but if that's what you want, sock it to 'em!" How It's Done The tactics used by Cassidy and Associates to press a case before Congress are common on Capitol Hill. Its staff cultivates powerful members of Congress, such as committee chairmen, and builds coalitions with other groups having the same goals. "It's all quite typical," says Nan Wells, director of government affairs at Princeton University. "We do it ourselves." The way Cassidy employees cement those ties, however, has come under attack. Federal Election Committee reports indicate that individuals in the firm have made numerous well-timed contributions to key members of Congress. In April 1986, for instance, Cassidy and six of his staffers contributed $3,000 to the campaign of Rep. Tom Bevill (D-Ala.). Two months later, money for four of Cassidy's clients was included in a bill that moved through Bevill's appropriations subcommittee. Cassidy also hires straight off the Hill, a practice that has drawn cries of influence-peddling. Frank Godfrey Jr., hired in 1984, worked on amendments for various Cassidy clients while serving as executive assistant to House Speaker Rep. Thomas (Tip) O'Neill. The firm's vice president, James Fabiani, was senior minority staff member of the House Appropriations Committee for several years before joining Cassidy. But as Tom Susman, a Washington lawyer who, has handled university clients for the firm of Ropes & Gray, points out, "every place in this town is a revolving door. Cassidy has heard these criticisms before, but they still anger him. "These people have a Jesuitical ability to deal with reality," he says. "They carry a peace placard in one hand, and a trunk of SDI money in the other." Adds Roy Meyers, director of communications, "Nothing we do here is illegal, immoral or fattening." In April, Rep. Robert Roe (DN.J.) introduced a bill to establish a $2.5 billion, 10-year program to help finance research facilities. The bill, which AAU and other science groups support, specifies that institutions compete for the money, much as they do now for research grants. It also requires that 15 percent of the money be set aside for institutions that receive less than $10 million annually in federal research funds. Cassidy commends Roe for his leadership. "It's a good bill, and a courageous bill in these economic times." But emphasizing that the need is much greater, he asks, "What happens to the rest of the people? Do they just sit there and wither?" The bill requires spending money on "repair, renovation, or replacement"—i.e., on the older institutions that already have research facilities, Cassidy notes. A staff member on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, which Roe chairs, said that the bill is not meant to preclude new structures, and that the language may be clarified after hearings are held this summer. Regardless of the fate of this, or other, efforts to help universities, Cassidy is optimistic about his firm's future. "We may have a shift in our clientele, but we still have a growing market." Carpenter is a science writer in Washington, D.C. U.S. Universities to Swear Off 'Pork' WASHINGTON—The heads of most of the major research universities in the United States have agreed to abstain from lobbying Congress for new science buildings for their institutions and, instead, to work for a new federal program to renovate the nation's research facilities. A poll by the American Association of Universities found that 78 percent of its 55 members were in favor of "a moratorium on earmarked funding for scientific facilities." The practice, known as pork-barrel politics, has become an increasingly common—and. controversial—way for individual universities to obtain federal funds for laboratories and other research facilities. The 43-10 vote, with two abstentions, is not expected to resolve the controversy. AAU President Robert Rosenzweig, in a letter to the university presidents and chancellors, admits that the moratorium is not binding and that there are no penalties for failing to comply with it. The organization, he said, will not oppose projects "once they have become visible in the Congress." But it's clear he's thought long and hard about how to keep the troops in line. "The maintenance of this group as an important force in higher education would be seriously compromised if [it] adopted some form of punishment for departure from positions agreed to by the majority," Rosenzweig wrote. "Having said that, it is important to add that membership confers on an institution obligations as well as benefits. Paramount among them is the obligation to give the heaviest kind of weight to positions that are adopted by a large preponderance of the members." The presidents and chancellors haven't given up lobbying, however. Their vote, actually a response to a resolution proposed at the group's annual meeting here in April, also contained a promise to work for a new federal program to renovate existing research facilities and build new ones. MU has already endorsed a bill by Rep. Robert Roe (D-NJ.) to provide the National Science Foundation with $2.5 billion over 10 years for such purposes.

Washington Lobbyist Reaps Contracts and Controversy

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