Hundreds of college-bound students whose parents draw state salaries could find themselves disqualified from receiving private financial aid this year because of the recently passed “Ethics in Government” initiative.

Amendment 41, approved by voters in November, bars state employees and their dependents from receiving “gifts” of $50 of more.

Curt Martin, director of financial aid at Mesa State College, said because of the amendment’s gift ban, private scholarship foundations that award funds without an ongoing commitment, such as maintaining a GPA or completing a major, will be illegal for the dependents of state employees to accept.

Martin said unlike state or federal aid, such as Pell Grants, private foundation monies are gifts, according to the law, as he understood it.

Because of that, Martin said he expected a number of private foundations to start asking applicants whether mom or dad are state employees.

“Some (foundations) are going to look at it and play it safe,” Martin said. “The donor will say, like the Daniels Fund, ‘Let’s play it safe, not cross that line.’”

Peter Droege, a spokesman for the Daniels Fund, said Amendment 41 has caused his organization “a bit of heartburn” throughout the foundation’s scholarship-candidate-selection process.

Droege said it is unfortunate that the state Constitution could prevent the foundation from providing funds to a large chunk of scholarship applicants.

“Around 500 candidates have applied right now for the program,” Droege said. “It seems about half have some sort of conflict.”

The Daniels Fund scholarship covers the difference between a school’s tuition and what financial aid monies the student receives and the applicant’s family can provide.

Droege said until lawmakers or the court resolve the problems with Amendment 41, his foundation cannot award any of their conflicted scholarship candidates with any funds.

While private statewide scholarship foundations, such as the Daniels Fund or the Boettcher Foundation, have announced their intentions to follow the letter of Amendment 41, one local scholarship fund has been left in limbo after the ethics amendment’s passage.

Carol Murphy, secretary and treasurer for the Saccomanno Higher Education Foundation, said nearly 350 foundation scholarships were handed out last year to residents of Mesa County and Utah’s Carbon County.

Scholarships from the Saccomanno Higher Education Foundation cover students’ tuition costs at colleges and vocational institutions, the costs of their books and on-campus living expenses.

“All I can say is that our scholarships are scholarships of need,” Murphy said. “So, I’m not really sure legally how that would affect us.”

Murphy said she is unsure of Amendment 41’s effects on the foundation, but once candidates are awarded the scholarships, there are no ongoing GPA or course-load requirements.

Because of this, under a recent legal opinion from the Colorado attorney general and lawyers for the Colorado General Assembly, the dependents of state employees can not accept the Saccomanno Higher Education Foundation scholarships under Amendment 41.

However, help might be on the way for affected scholarship applicants.

Rep. Kent Lambert, R-Colorado Springs, and Sen. David Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs, have introduced implementation legislation for Amendment 41 that would cut down on whom the amendment affects.

Under the Lambert-Schultheis bill, Amendment 41’s provisions would only apply to members of the General Assembly as well as their dependents.

Thus, the family of civil servants and public university employees who have no hand in policy making would not be affected.

But, even with this legislation currently sitting in the queue, some lawmakers have their doubts about the ability of the Legislature to intervene. Because of contradictory language in the amendment that at the same time asks the Legislature to implement it, the amendment also states: “In no way shall such legislation limit or restrict the provisions of this article.”

Rep. Bernie Buescher, D-Grand Junction, said the second half of the amendment’s text has restricted the ability of lawmakers to intervene.

And, in a letter to University of Colorado President Hank Brown, Colorado Deputy Attorney General Jason Dunn said the vague language of the amendment makes direct legislative action nearly impossible.

“Ultimately, you may want to encourage the Legislature to define some of the ambiguous terms in the measure, but I caution that legislative action cannot supplant the clear language of the measure, nor will a reviewing court necessarily be bound by the Legislature’s interpretation,” Dunn wrote.

He said Coloradans might have to wait for either another ballot measure or referred measure from voters in 2008 to correct Amendment 41’s problem.

Source: www.gjsentinel.com

This entry was posted by Taman Siswa on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 9:29 am and is filed under Education News, Scholarship. Tags: College, Education News, Financial Aid, Grant, Scholarship, Student, . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.