Olympia Update No.
1 for the 2003 Legislative Session
December 17, 2002
From: Larry Ganders,
Assistant to the President
925 Plum St. SE - Building 4, P.O. Box 43165, Olympia, WA 98504-3165
Governor’s
higher education budget continues trend:
Students
paying more for less.
Facing more than a
$2 billion
shortfall in state revenues, Gov. Gary Locke
today proposed a biennial operating budget package that continues the state
trend of adding enrollments while cutting budgets and raising tuition for
students and their families. The proposal cuts Washington State University
funding $31.4 million or about 8 percent.
It allows the university a 9 percent per year
tuition increase for WSU resident undergraduate students but that would make up
only some of the cuts…thus reducing the quality of existing core programs. The
governor’s budget is likely to lead to students’ tuition paying a majority of
the cost of education for the first time in WSU history. In the early 1980s,
student tuition covered only 25 percent of the cost. For the following 15 years,
the state set the percentage at 33 percent. The allowed 9 percent tuition
increase and corresponding state cuts would mean that WSU students would pay 59
percent of the cost of their education by 2005.
WSU and the University of Washington will
continue to discuss a different approach that would add additional students only
if there were adequate funds to support the quality of education. Both
institutions believe that the better way to grow programs would be through world
class state-funded programs that would attract federal and private matching
monies. That could only come with additional state investment.
The governor’s proposal relies on no state tax
increases, although the governor said he will continue to look at other tax
options to improve his budget. In addition, the governor proposed a capital
construction budget that should allow for some key Pullman construction projects
to move ahead but would virtually freeze building projects at branch campuses.
The proposal will be the basis for wrangling in the Legislature beginning next
month over how to deal with the state’s budget deficit.
No general salary increases for state employees,
including university faculty, as employee-paid benefits increase. Recruitment
and retention fund provided. The
governor surprised many persons by proposing no salary increases for any state
employees, including the automatic boosts that voters approved for K-12 and
community college faculty. Nearly every WSU employee will see a reduction in net
take home pay as the governor plans increases in employee-paid health care
costs. The budget, however, does provide a special fund to selectively give
recruitment and retention increases to faculty. WSU is provided $2.9 million in
the governor’s budget for that purpose.
Enrollment funding provided is inadequate for
high-demand areas. Veterinary Medicine request is not funded.
The governor has referenced nursing,
engineering, computer science and veterinary medicine as critical high-demand
areas that could expand enrollments with a pool of money for 1,550 additional
students at the universities and community colleges in his budget.
However, the governor capped funding so that it can not be used for the higher
cost university programs (especially those listed by the governor) without
further cuts in the WSU budget.
Johnson Hall Addition, Cleveland Education
Addition win support of the governor.
An $82.6 million capital construction budget
for the Pullman campus features construction money for the Johnson Hall
additional, a $35.2 million project that will move many of the laboratories into
state-of-the art facilities.
The governor also approved $11.16 million for
an addition to Cleveland Hall, the headquarters for the WSU College of
Education. There is also design money provided for an interdisciplinary
biotechnology/life science building. Pre-design money was provided for a
Biomedical Sciences facility. While language was included in the budget for a
Pullman wastewater treatment project to recharge the aquifer, no funding was
provided.
Governor appears to halt branch campus and
research station construction. The
only branch campus project receiving funding in the capital construction budget
is $150,000 to pre-design a bioproducts and sciences building near WSU
Tri-Cities that would be operated in cooperation with Battelle’s Pacific
Northwest National Laboratories. However, the governor provides no state funding
in future years for construction. He also has not provided construction dollars
for the Spokane Academic Center, a $32.5 million building ready for
construction, and $4.3 million worth of Vancouver campus utilities. A $1.5
million Prosser multi-purpose building is also not funded.
