This week, supporters of the University of South Florida's proposed urban medical school will again seek the approval of the Board of Governors, which oversees the State University System.

It's another big vote for the USF project. But it's not the vote.

That's because the fate of the $157 million development will ultimately be decided by Florida's most powerful politicians.

"It's about he who holds the purse strings," said former Sen. Paula Dockery, "and he who controls the one holding the purse strings."

USF's project needs state funding. The BOG recommends projects to lawmakers, but it cannot fund them. That's the job of the Florida Legislature more specifically, the powerful chairmen of the House and Senate appropriations committees.

And if the medical school gets its money, then it has to survive Gov. Rick Scott's veto pen.

The governor, experienced Tallahassee hands suggest, could be the real wild card in all this.

USF wants to build a 12-story building at the corner of Channelside Drive and Meridian Avenue that would house the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine and Heart Institute.

Both were separate projects once headed for the main Tampa campus. But then Jeff Vinik, who owns the Tampa Bay Lightning, donated an acre of his downtown property to bring both to his $1billion urban renewal project.

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USF's downtown medical school hopes rest in Tallahassee