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Many members of UNC-Chapel Hill’s board of trustees believe the state’s oldest university is getting shortchanged when it comes to state funding for buildings and repairs.
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For that, “there’s no excuse,” said board member Jennifer Lloyd, an investor and healthcare executive.
The board’s budget committee was waylaid Wednesday morning by explosive complaints over the perceived lack of attention Carolina’s infrastructure gets from state legislators — especially compared to other institutions in the UNC System.
Chief financial officer Nate Knuffman showed the board a chart showing how capital projects have been funded within the UNC system since 2011. “You’ll see UNC-Chapel Hill is not the highest bar,” Knuffman said. “In fact, we are third in that list, less than half of NC State, and about two-thirds of ECU.”
Jim Blaine, one of the board’s most politically connected members, reacted swiftly.
“I think this is, frankly, a measure of political influence,” Blaine said. “… I think this speaks pretty loudly about how good a job we’re doing in Raleigh as it relates to making our case for more capital funding.”
Republicans and their appointees control the General Assembly, UNC System Board of Governors and UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees. The trustees are appointed by lawmakers and the Board of Governors.
There was disagreement among the board over whether the comparatively low levels of capital funding stem from a failure on UNC-Chapel Hill’s part to advocate for its needs — or whether the UNC System’s Board of Governors and the state legislators are just ignoring UNC-Chapel Hill’s requests.
The UNC System allocates money for repair work, while money for large, new projects go through the legislature.
A sharp moment came when the trustees looked at the UNC System’s $200 million repair pool for all campuses, and saw that Chapel Hill’s share — $21.6 million — was well below NC State’s $42 million and UNC Charlotte’s $62 million.
“How are we allowing this to happen?” asked Lloyd. “We have so many people on this board who are close to members of the Board of Governors. How is this at all acceptable?”
Blaine made a forceful argument that faculty activism gives legislators a bad impression of UNC-Chapel Hill’s identity, leading directly to decreased funding levels.
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“There’s a professor at UNC School of Law named Gene [Nichol]. I will lay in the road to defend his First Amendment right to say whatever he wants whenever he wants,” Blaine said. He cited Nichol’s publication of opinion essays in local newspapers like The News & Observer decrying legislative leadership.
“We are fools if we do not think that his exercise of his First Amendment rights does not end up representing to the legislature what they think every single person on this campus believes about them,” Blaine said.
Blaine said legislators are less likely to give UNC-Chapel Hill money when they see the school as a “bunch of people that hate you. They’re adamantly opposed to you. They’re trying to defeat you. They do not believe in what you’re doing.”
This is the argument other campuses in the UNC System are making to legislators when they’re advocating for money for themselves, Blaine said.
Blaine served as outgoing Senate leader Phil Berger’s chief of staff from 2011 to 2018, and was highly influential in helping to shape and implement Berger’s political agenda — which has turned out to be the dominant political agenda in the state for the last 15 years.
Board member Marty Kotis, a commercial real estate investor and developer, delivered a slightly different reasoning for the legislature’s perceived disregard.
“The reality at the [Board of Governors] is Carolina is seen as having plenty of resources,” Kotis said. “We have our SpaceX investment. People will see we’ve got a lot of dollars and say ‘you have plenty, so you don’t need it.’”
During a presentation later in the day about UNC’s impressive fundraising results, trustee Patrick Ballantine brought the conversation back to what he sees as the legislature’s neglect.
“Everyone thinks we have everything. Well, we work for it,” Ballantine said. “We show the results … We’re pitching in. We should be rewarded for that at the legislature.”
Trustees asked staff to compile UNC-Chapel Hill’s funding requests alongside funding the school actually received to get a sense of how deep the problem runs.
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This story was originally published September 23, 2026 at 5:05 PM.