TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — The New Jersey Legislature has approved a bill that disbands the University of Medicine and Dentistry and redistributes it to Rutgers and Rowan universities.
Passage by the Assembly and Senate capped weeks of intense behind-the-scenes negotiations and pressure on reluctant lawmakers to get the university overhaul through the Legislature by June 30.
The bill gives Rowan the status of a research university and establishes a regional academic health sciences hub in South Jersey.
Changes in the 120-page proposal were still being made until just before the votes were taken Thursday.
Gov. Chris Christie and Democratic power broker George Norcross III both curried votes in support of the bill, which now heads to Christie for a signature.
Rutgers’ Board of Governors voted to conditionally back the proposal earlier Thursday, after calling an emergency meeting.
Rutgers’ trustees have threatened to sue.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
Rutgers’ main governing body on Thursday conditionally backed a revised plan to overhaul New Jersey’s higher education system that retains its authority over all of its campuses.
Meanwhile, lawmakers said they planned a vote on the compromise plan moving swiftly through the Legislature on Thursday.
The vote by the Rutgers Board of Governors was 9-1, a decision expected to help ease passage of a university consolidation bill by the Legislature.
Unlike earlier versions, the new merger bill lets Rutgers retain academic and financial authority over its Camden and Newark campuses, though the health sciences curriculum and projects at its Camden campus and Rowan University would fall under the oversight of a new board.
The legislation breaks up the University of Medicine and Dentistry, distributing it to Rutgers and Rowan. Rowan, which was already preparing to open a medical school this year, would be given research-university status by the state and start more intense collaborations with Rutgers-Camden.
In a statement after the vote, the board said getting a medical school would help elevate Rutgers to the ranks of the nation’s top 25 research institutions.
“This is going to really catapult New Jersey on a national stage,” state Sen. Joseph Vitale, a Democrat from Woodbridge, said at a State House news conference announcing details of the plans.
The board held off giving final approval until it gets more information on costs and other aspects of the legislation.
Though the board called the emergency meeting to consider the resolution hours before the Legislature was to vote on the university restructuring bill, Gerald Harvey, vice chairman of the Board of Governors, said the governors’ affirmative vote shouldn’t be construed as “endorsing legislation we have not read.”
Rutgers will take on $500 million in debt when it absorbs the medical school. Candice Straight, a member of the Board of Governors, told lawmakers during a recent hearing on the bill that tuition would rise by 15 percent for every $100 million in debt Rutgers assumes. However, the board could spread out the debt over many years.
Faculty members who have opposed the merger plan cautioned that the board, having not seen the revised legislation or figured its costs, was taking a leap of faith.
Rutgers trustees, who serve on a separate board that is mainly advisory, are still divided and did not plan to vote Thursday.
A legal memo from legislative researchers concluded that the law establishing the state university is a contract between the boards and the state; changing the terms requires approval from the parties. That contradicted an earlier legal opinion that signoff from the trustees, who have vocally opposed the deal, was not required.
The trustees have retained a lawyer and are threatening to sue.
State Sen. Donald Norcross, a Democrat from Camden and one of the architects of the compromise plan, said he expects the trustees to agree once they know the details.
He said Rutgers will now stop treating its campuses in Newark and Camden as money-making operations and start funding them more fully. He said that the Camden campus could take up three times as much space in a decade as a result of more state funding and better access to outside grants.
The deal calls for the state to continue to fund University Hospital, UMDNJ’s money-losing teaching hospital in Newark and the state’s largest provider of care for the uninsured poor, satisfying a major concern of lawmakers from Essex County. The revised bill also shields Rutgers and Rowan from liabilities arising from medical malpractice claims that haven’t been filed.
Vitale said he expects the upfront cost to the state to be about $40 million. But he said the universities would have more revenue opportunities through obtaining grants. The cost, though, remains in dispute.
The 100-page legislation has changed often as it sped through the Legislature in about a week, skipping a hearing before the Assembly Higher Education panel though it is a major higher education bill.
Republican Gov. Chris Christie, a proponent of the restructuring, imposed a June 30 deadline for putting the framework in place. The actual plan would not be implemented until next year.
Democratic powerbroker George Norcross III — the brother of Sen. Norcross — is also a supporter.
George Norcross is chairman of the board of Cooper University Hospital, which has partnered with Rowan on a new medical school. The bill gives UMDNJ’s osteopathic school to Rowan, and designates the school a research university, which makes it eligible for more state and federal funding and gives it greater independence in awarding contracts.
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Associated Press reporter Geoff Mulvihill in Trenton contributed.
