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Olympia Update No 11 •
April 27, 2005
Sine Die Update
From: Larry Ganders,
Assistant to the President
925 Plum St. SE - Building 4, P.O. Box 43165, Olympia, WA 98504-3165
For Sine
Die status of bills tracked by WSU,
click here
For a printer-friendly Microsoft Word version,
click
here
For a comparison of budget proposals,
click here
Photo Left: Rep.
Gary Alexander, R-Olympia, the ranking Republican on the House
Appropriations Committee, leaves the capitol on the last day of session
with a stack of newly-passed budget documents.
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The Legislature at
Sine Die:
2005 legislative
contradictions
plague WSU & higher education
A tough session dodged a terrible outcome for WSU
But there were only
glimpses of total success
The 2005 Legislature
battled through a $1.7 billion revenue shortfall and $500 million in court cases
to adjourn on-time Sunday with their agenda for higher education bringing net
benefits to students and faculty at Washington State University, including a
14.4 percent increase in the institution’s operating budget during the next two
years, salary increases, and a $114 million construction budget. But the
university is left with contradictions in state policy and funding, including
some cuts to existing programs and redirection of student tuition monies to
other programs. There were mixed gains on higher education funding policy,
construction, research, performance contract, and diversity issues that
legislators had identified. The session left educators with glimpses of how the
state can still improve on treatment of its research universities … but they
were only glimpses.
Research made some unexpected gains but suffered some unexpected losses.
It was shaping up to
be a session for university research led by an aggressive agenda set by Gov.
Christine Gregoire and her fellow Democratic leaders. The chair of the House Higher Education Committee
promoted a sort of "research fair" in the
capitol conference room that displayed college and university projects. There were
joint meetings of higher education and technology committees featuring UW and
WSU research. But the Legislature viewed the governor’s research agenda with
mixed results. WSU’s highest legislative priority, the Biotechnology/Life
Sciences Building was recommended by the governor but delayed by a Legislature
that preferred to dole out its $57 million to smaller projects scattered around
the state, many of them classroom buildings. A capital construction priority
list that the Legislature pushed so hard to create and was endorsed by the
Higher Education Coordinating Board was not followed. Yet the final capital
budget provides additional language for the return of a list next biennium and a
strengthened role for the HEC Board. The University of Washington suffered
similar setbacks as WSU on research buildings with seed funding for a South Lake
Union research project scrapped because of fears that medical research leads to
high medical costs.
Yet other priority WSU
research buildings were funded, such as the Tri-Cities Bioproducts Building and
a special appropriation for a Prosser Precision Agriculture addition. The vision
of a health sciences campus at Riverpoint in Spokane was enhanced by approval of
the Spokane Nursing Building. Ironically, these efforts will be hampered by the
delay of the Biotechnology building.
On the program side, the
governor proposed the Life Sciences Discovery Fund, Engrossed Substitute
Senate Bill 5581, a plan to automatically channel tobacco lawsuit
settlement monies into matching university-private sector research beginning in
2008. UW and WSU are expected to be at the center of those allocations, which
could run $35 million per year and cover topics from cancer research to
agriculture…the kinds of programs that will be in the delayed WSU
Biotechnology/Life Sciences building. The focus of the legislative debate was
not on the wonders of a billion dollars of new research that could be generated
by this seed money, but the prospect that human cloning or embryonic stem cell
research could be promoted with this funding. In the end, the state
Senate agreed with the House that there should be no moratorium on “cloning” in
at least that bill. It took an unexpected crossing of party lines by Sen. Jerome Delvin, R-Tri-Cities, to send the legislation to the governor on a 25-24 vote
late in the session. Despite initial bipartisan support for the governor’s plan
in the House, the votes there were narrow as well with early advocates such as
Rep. Skip Priest, R-Federal Way, voting against the legislation and urging
further study. The final bill is a big win for Gov. Gregoire, who also broke a
huge logjam over the Transportation Budget. But amended language in the Life
Sciences bill leaves some doubt as to how “automatic” the funding will be in
2008.
The concerns about the
morality of university research were even more focused in Engrossed House
Bill 1268, the “Stem Cell Research” bill sponsored by 33 House members
but stranded on a 23-26 vote on the Senate floor. The measure provided the
procedure for the donation of embryonic tissue for research purposes but made it
a felony to sell such tissues. While Republicans generally opposed the bill,
Senate Minority Leader Bill Finkbeiner, R-Redmond, cast a yes vote. Democrats
voting no included Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane.
Universities did, however,
win some clarity on the ethics of faculty working with private firms to
transfer technology, clarified under Substitute House Bill 1806, which
was signed into law by Gov. Gregoire on April 21. The bill was strongly
supported by UW and WSU.
The Legislature also passed
the governor’s Academy of Sciences bill, Engrossed Senate Bill 5381,
which creates a non-profit entity independent of government, tied to the
research universities, to provide scientific analysis and recommendations to the
Legislature and governor. The bill states that the
presidents of UW and WSU shall jointly form and serve as the co-chairs of an
organizing committee for the purpose of creating the Washington academy of
sciences. The committee will represent various disciplines from the academic,
private, governmental, and research sectors. Staff from the University of
Washington and Washington State University, and from other available entities,
shall provide support to the organizing committee under the direction of the
co-chairs.
There was no funding for
the WSU-UW request on research and technology transfer, although WSU received
$400,000 to control oyster predators in Willapa Bay. Legislators added language
to promote organic farming and horticultural programs, but offered no money.
It seemed
to be a year of performance audits, yet….
Legislation that would do selective “performance audits” of state agencies
including Washington State University has been unsuccessful for many years in
the Legislature. This year Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 1064 passed and was
delivered to the governor, perhaps with proposed initiatives pending that
offered some incentives. It was the first year the universities supported the
proposals as the final bill utilizes existing university accreditation
documentation. With all this focus on performance, it seemed ironic that months
of work by the research universities to develop “performance contracts”
was largely left on the table. Perhaps the decision reflected a
legislature and governor that were not sure they could live up to their end of
the contract beyond the biennium. WSU’s proposed performance contracts outlined
how specific outcomes, like additional student enrollments and economic
development, could be affected by specific increases in funding for research.
Some limited measures were written into the budget, but it was just another peek
at how the system might work differently.
There were
strong gains for student financial aid for the needy.
Yet, this budget marks the end of the Promise Scholarship program, which
provided merit-based financial aid to low and medium-income families. It was a
key platform of the former governor, Gary Locke.
The 2005
Session Was Historic for Branch Campuses.
WSU-Vancouver emerged as the least controversial
campuses to evolve into four-year institutions. The campus received 250
upper-division and 200 lower-division enrollments, adequately funded at $9,000
per student for upper-division and $6,303 for lower division. There was also
$350,000 in start-up costs for admitting freshmen and sophomore students. The
campus was also funded for a new student services building for construction this
fall, plus classroom building design for 2007-2009 and another for 2009-2011.
Yet, there was no upper-division funding for WSU-Tri-Cities and its 25 new
upper-division students are subject to approval by the Higher Education
Coordinating Board. Indeed, the language on WSU-Tri-Cities, triumphant by
securing a new building in partnership with Battelle, was the most restrictive
of the four UW and WSU branch campuses. The new roles for the branches are
contained in Engrossed Second Substitute House Bill 1794.
Thoughts of
new universities delayed. There was
talk that a new North Snohomish State College might emerge out of this
legislative session. But the outcomes beyond changes to the branch campuses was
less dramatic. Senate Bill 5425, creating the new college, died early in the
session in committee.
The
Education Legacy Trust Account. Will
it have a legacy? There was lots of talk this session of restructuring higher
education funding and identifying reliable funding sources. The biennial budget
makes an interesting decision to create the account to fund all new student
enrollments, including by earmarking revenues from a re-imposed estate tax.
However, the permanent statute contains no on-going provisions for benefiting
higher education. Further consideration of higher education funding is left to
yet another study, contained in Engrossed Second Substitute Senate Bill 5441,
the Education finance study that was passed into law.
Green
Buildings and Red Ink.
Concerns in
past sessions that university buildings were costing too much money, however,
yielded to a strong lobby for “Green buildings” codes that are certain to raise
the cost of WSU buildings. The new building codes to cut energy and utility
costs do contain an exemption for research buildings sought by WSU and UW.
The Green building bill, Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 5509, has been
signed into law by the governor.
Diversity
Bills Among Majority Democrats.
Another theme for the upcoming session was an attempt to give our campuses a
more diverse student population. With some fanfare, Substitute Senate Bill
5575, passed out of the Senate education committee. The bill allowed
universities to take a more holistic approach to admissions. However, the bill
was stalled in the Rules committee and never left the Senate. A back-up plan by
Sen. Jeannie Kohl Welles, D-Seattle, in Substitute Senate Bill 6073,
never made it to the Senate floor. Once again, legislation extending civil
rights laws to cover sexual preference, was narrowly defeated on the Senate
floor.
Cost-of-Living Pay Increases Finally Arrive But Not For Everyone
Most university employees received a
salary increase from this Legislature. But the new collective bargaining law has
made it more complicated than past years. And under the terms of that law, some
WSU classified employees in bargaining units may not benefit from the increase.
So,
is the WSU glass half empty or half full? Since there’s a strong thirst for WSU’s brand
of higher education in this state, the half full part is a refreshing change.
But for those anxious for a long, tall drink of higher education policy…we
have to look to the next legislative session to end the drought.
For more information, call Larry
Ganders, Assistant to the President, 360-956-2165.
