The Senate Finance Committee approved a bill Tuesday designed to provide regulatory relief to the state's three major research institutions but did so only after killing a controversial provision that would have freed them from oversight by the Commission on Higher Education.

Doing so was considered the best way to get the less contentious points of the bill through the Senate this session, which has only a couple of days left.

Still, the bill faces hurdles. It must pass the Senate. Then it has to go to a conference committee to work out differences between the House and Senate versions.

Indeed, that also means that the governance provision may be revived, because it is included in the House version that passed 84-10. "It depends on how firm the Senate is on its position and how firm the House is on its position," said Bo Faulkner, lobbyist for the Medical University of South Carolina.

Nevertheless, the likely defeat of the breakaway provision, at least in this session, is a blow to MUSC President Ray Greenberg and his counterparts at USC and Clemson. All three had pushed hard for the proposal.

The provision would have placed the universities under the authority of a new entity, the South Carolina Research Oversight Council.

The universities believe that the commission has a "one-size-fits-all" mindset for governing the state's colleges and universities, even though they're all different. The research universities, in particular, felt that the new council would better promote cooperation and would foster a research-friendly environment.

But the provision generated much opposition, notably from the commission itself as well as the state's four-year colleges and universities and technical colleges, which wanted out from under the commission, too. This led to questions over how they would be governed.

With so little time remaining in the session, the Senate panel felt that the provision should be tabled and time taken to formulate a more complete governance plan.

Greenberg, however, doesn't consider the loss of the provision to be a big blow.

"To me, that's not the central focus of what we're interested in getting accomplished," he said. Rather, it's more important to move the other portions of the bill forward, he said.

Those provisions have generated less controversy.

They include proposals designed to provide the universities regulatory relief by, for example, allowing private companies to build on public land, and doing away with a requirement that universities secure commission approval when hiring workers funded with federal grants.

More important, Greenberg said, is a proposal to use the state's borrowing capacity to provide millions in matching dollars for the universities to construct research facilities.

The institutions now have to borrow money and solicit charitable donations to build such facilities, like the Children's Research Institute at MUSC. The resources aren't there to keep doing that, Greenberg said.

Providing a means to build facilities, he said, would be an economic development tool. The new facilities would boost research at the institutions, which could then lead to the creation of job-generating spin-off companies.

Jonathan Maze covers health care and non-profits. Reach him at jmaze@postandcourier.com or 937-5719.