P: Did the president deal directly with the school board or did he go through you as
 the chairman of the advisory board?

R: That is correct, [he went through me].

P: And you met regularly with the school board?

R: With the superintendent, principally. The superintendent was the key person and
 the superintendent at that time was someone that we were able to relate to.

P: Where did the dollars come from that supported the school?

R: Every penny [came] from the state. This is very unusual. Most of the big successful
 community college operations in the country get most of their money from local ad
 valorem taxes, [as in] California, for example.

P: Florida does not [get community college money from a specific tax]?

R: Not one penny, ever.

P: That is true today too, in 1994?

R: Yes.

P: So everything comes from the state?

R: [And that includes] not only operating money, but building money too. [It is] really
 a very unique situation.

P: Well, you do not hear very much controversy about the budget for the community
 colleges in the same way as you do about the university budgets.

R: I really think that has happened for a couple of reasons. One is the effort on the
 part of the community college system to operate as a system, and not to have school
 "x" getting all of its legislators together and saying, "Boy, we have to have more
 money," and school "y" doing the same thing. I am not going to say that that never
 happened, but by and large, most of us sort of took a blood oath that we would do
 our best to fight out our battles internally, and if we thought that funding was unfair
 we would lay it on the table and try to work it out. And if we did not get it worked
 out this time, we would try again next time.

P: So there was no competition [between specific community colleges]?

R: I would say, by and large, that was true. Now, there were occasional exceptions.
 There certainly were. There would be occasions when someone had a legislator who
 was speaker of the House or who was president of the Senate, and they might get


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