Yale Deal - Part 8

From the Yale Daily News: A group of Connecticut lawmakers sent a letter to University President Maurie McInnis and trustees threatening to revisit Yale’s tax-exempt status and reform the process of selecting the Yale Corporation if the University settles with the federal government. The state legislators, most of whom are Yale alumni, urged the University to bring the Trump administration to court over Department of Justice investigations into its admissions practices. That probe, which began at the Yale School of Medicine and expanded to the Law School and Yale College, represents the University’s first major confrontation with the second Trump administration... 

In their letter, the lawmakers threatened to review Yale’s special exemption from state property taxes and reassess the composition of the Yale Corporation if the University cuts a deal with the Trump administration. They cited the favorable ruling Harvard received after it sued the government over $2 billion in federal grant freezes, promising to support Yale — which has not received targeted cuts — if it chose to go to court.

...The lawmakers wrote that a settlement of the kind “reportedly under discussion” could “fundamentally unsettle” the centuries-old bargain between Connecticut and Yale. Since the Connecticut Colony granted Yale’s original trustees license in 1701 to start a college, the school’s founding charter has been amended to include various agreements between the University and the state. These have concerned the composition of the Yale board of trustees and, under an 1834 provision of the charter, the tax-exempt status of University property that serves some commercial use, provided it does not bring in an income of over $6,000. Due to the University’s nonprofit status, none of the educational buildings on its campus are taxed... The feasibility of the letter’s threats regarding Yale’s taxation status and the Corporation’s composition is unclear...

While the lawmakers’ tactics in some ways mirror policy changes under the Trump administration — including an endowment tax increase that took effect this month and is expected to cost Yale around $300 million per year — the signatories who spoke to the News differentiated their letter from federal attacks on higher education...

Full story at https://yaledailynews.com/articles/objecting-to-trump-talks-ct-lawmakers-threaten-yale-s-tax-exempt-status.