Olympia Update No.
4 for the 2004 Legislative Session
February 27, 2004
From: Larry Ganders,
Assistant to the President
925 Plum St. SE - Building 4, P.O. Box 43165, Olympia, WA 98504-3165
New Page 1
With 13 days
remaining in the supplemental session:
House, Senate
proposals both fund $31.6 Million For Complete
Construction of the
Spokane Academic Center at Riverpoint
State Senate leaders this afternoon released a proposed
supplemental capital construction
budget bill (SB 6233) that fully funds $31.6 million in construction of the
Academic Center building. The Senate proposal is just the latest of developments
for WSU Spokane in the 2004 Legislature, a session proving to be pivotal in the
future development of the Riverpoint campus.
Spokane-area legislators rallied in
the state House Capital Committee Thursday to protect capital budget provisions
that also provide $31.6 million in construction monies for the Academic Center.
House Capital Chair Hans Dunshee, working with freshman Rep. Timm Ormsby,
D-Spokane, proposed a capital construction budget (Substitute House Bill 2573)
that completely funds construction of the new five-story library and classroom
building on the Riverpoint campus. Crucial minority Republican votes for the
capital budget were provided in committee by Reps. Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville
and Brad Benson, R-Spokane. The House budget passed committee 17-8 and is
headed for the House floor.
Lobbying efforts by the Spokane Regional Chamber of
Commerce, Avista Corp., and others were instrumental in securing the House
committee position and the Senate proposal.
On the
Senate side, the proposal has been pushed all session by Sen. Brian Murray,
R-Spokane; Sen. Larry Sheahan, R-Rosalia, and Senate Minority Leader Lisa Brown,
D-Spokane.
The $31.6 million appropriation to build the 106,000-square foot
building is far more than the $6.6 million earmarked by the governor for site
excavation, utilities, and a building foundation. The governor’s proposal is a
commitment to construction but would delay completion until additional
appropriations could be secured by WSU next year. The new House and Senate positions mean
the building, the highest capital priority of Washington State University, would
be completed without any further votes of the Legislature. WSU would return to
the Legislature only to secure about $5 million funding for adjacent land to
support the building’s parking lot and fill out a hole in the campus.
Passage of
the $31.6 million proposal in the House is not a certainty as the Spokane
appropriation is one of the largest in an otherwise lean capital construction
budget. Some Seattle-area legislators have grumbled that it is too much money to
be spending in one location. However, WSU has pressed for timely construction of
the building to remove a bottleneck that has stunted the growth of programs and
enrollments at Riverpoint.
With WSU classrooms at Riverpoint full, this new
building will add 346 classroom seats, enough to accommodate more than 800 WSU
and Eastern Washington University full-time students. That will provide the
capacity for needed new upper-division, graduate and professional programs.
Nearly one-fourth of the building will be devoted to Riverpoint’s first
permanent library, a facility that will be shared by EWU and WSU. It will also
soon include the collection of the WSU College of Nursing, which supports
students at other institutions like Gonzaga and Whitworth, and thus allow for
nursing education to soon be moved to the Riverpoint campus.
Earlier
this week, the Senate Higher Education Committee gave its blessing to a
House position to officially consider WSU Spokane as part of the main campus,
not a “branch campus.” The designation should allow WSU maximum authority
to develop research and graduate programs in Spokane that are seen as a key to
economic development. WSU recently received a large grant for shock physics
research to be conducted in Spokane. Removing the branch designation also might
reflect a greater understanding by lawmakers that many specialized health
sciences and professional programs at the Spokane campus can not be easily
compared with the cost and program mix at other “branch” campuses across the
state. Indeed, the term “branch campus,” which was dropped by WSU some years
ago, could be legally changed for Vancouver and Tri-Cities as well, according to
the Senate committee version of House Bill 2707, which is now in the Senate
Rules Committee.
Pullman Wastewater Treatment Project Moves Ahead in the Proposed
House, Senate Capital Budgets. In
another relatively late development in the evolution of the House capital
budget, about $3.4 million was added to begin construction on a Pullman project
to recycle wastewater for irrigation. Some minority Republicans including Reps.
Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, and Don Cox, R-Colfax, appeared to have played a
key role in getting the funding added to the budget. In the Senate, the proposal
unveiled Friday funds the project. Efforts to get the project funded in the
Senate were led by Sen. Larry Sheahan, R-Rosalia.
Buckley 4-H facility still has life in the House capital budget,
Puyallup land sale addressed. Rep. Dawn
Morrell, D-Puyallup, succeeded Thursday in transferring 160 of about 750 acres
under the control of WSU to complete university ownership. WSU strongly
supported the Morrell amendment. All 750 acres are technically owned by the
Department of Social and Health Services and many legislators would like to see
the acreage held in trust for the developmentally disabled. That makes the
Morrell amendment to earmark 160 acres of forest land for WSU quite
controversial in the Legislature and many of the legislators who voted for the
proposal did so with some reservations. However, the Morrell amendment keeps
alive the possibility of a new WSU Extension Center at Buckley that could
accommodate a variety of WSU 4-H programs. In exchange for the 160 acres, WSU
agreed to give up its interests in the remaining 550 acres. It also agreed to
keep 22 acres of pasture property south of the Puyallup Station, which had been
prepared to sale. Bills out of the Senate so far have not favored a continuing
WSU role at Buckley.
The WSU Net request for communications
infrastructure is funded at $2 million in the Senate budget but so far has not
been funded in House versions. The governor provided $6 million.
