Official refutes letter

City Solicitor Judith Harris responded this week to a city councilman's complaint about her legal opinion on the side of the University in the Mayor's Scholarships dispute. In a point-by-point rebuttal letter dated March 24, Harris refutes the assertions made by Councilman-at-large Angel Ortiz that her conclusion in favor of the University's position misread a disputed 1977 city ordinance and ignored important factors. Harris first challenges Ortiz over the relative importance of the phrase, "to be awarded annually." The phrase appears in many parts of the ordinance and is stressed by University critics as proof that the University must offer 125 new scholarships per year rather than 125 overall per year, as the University claims. In a letter earlier this month, Ortiz criticized the city solicitor for overemphasizing the general intent of the ordinance as a whole -- along with its historical context -- rather than making a literal interpretation of what Ortiz called the "clear language" of the ordinance and the phrase in question. But Harris wrote back that the use of the phrase, "to be awarded annually," is ambiguous, adding that the absence of the phrase in the document's preamble only increases the confusion. She noted that the phrase could be interpreted as meaning "that a total of 125 four year scholarships be maintained at any one time, with the Mayor annually awarding scholarships as necessary to maintain the total at 125." This argument is similar to one that University lawyers have used in court documents since a coalition of unions and student groups filed suit against the University in October. Harris also addresses the suggestion by Ortiz that she did not properly consider a passage in the 1977 ordinance, in which the University agreed to "increase" the value of its scholarship commitment in return for the city's permission to mortgage land. In her defense, Harris repeats parts of her original opinion, where she noted that the increase referred to eliminating outdated dollar caps from an 1882 ordinance and changing the name of 75 "free" scholarships to "full tuition" scholarships. She also mentions in her letter that there is no historical evidence to support the claim that the 1977 ordinance would quadruple the University's commitment. Like University lawyers, she makes reference to City Council testimony from 1977, which does not mention such quadrupling. Harris also echoes University lawyers in rejecting an argument, made by Ortiz and other University critics, that a quadrupled University commitment makes sense because the University's student body and the land value had quadrupled since the ordinance was last amended in 1910. "In short, all the relevant history supports the University's position," she concludes.

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