News & Updates

An unusual story from Las Vegas, where UNLV President David Ashley was demoted by the Board of Regents for continuing to protest budget cuts to the school after the Regents had signed off on a plan to trim UNLV’s budget more than that of the University of Nevada Reno.    According to an article in the Las Vegas Sun:

The Board of Regents had proposed to the Legislature a budget plan that would make the same percentage cut in every institution’s budget. Under that plan, because of funding inequities that have existed for decades between Northern and Southern Nevada, UNLV would have taken a bigger hit than its Northern Nevada peer. UNLV’s budget would have lost $11 million more than that of the University of Nevada, Reno.

(Regent Jason) Geddes, who represents Washoe County on the board, said Ashley’s behind-the-scenes lobbying to make the reductions more equitable showed he can’t collaborate and wasn’t interested in the good of the system. In other words, he wasn’t a team player.

“You continued to pursue your dissenting opinion throughout the session and the final vote came out as your decision. I found that very troubling,” Geddes said. “You can dissent all you want (initially), but once the board makes a decision, you need to give it up.”

Others defended Ashley’s actions:

“He was part of a huge population of Southern Nevadans that were against it,” said Steve Sisolak, a former regent turned Clark County commissioner. “It was a disproportionate cut to UNLV versus UNR. It was obvious, egregious and should have been brought to the attention of the Legislature sooner.”

Graduate students said the campus community would have turned against Ashley if he had acted in any other way.

“Faculty and students would have said he failed the university if he had been silent about that plan,” said Kyle George, vice president of the Graduate and Professional Student Association. “He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.”

The circumstances are certainly unusual, but they serve to underscore the difficulties public university systems are facing throughout the country as they deal with severe budget shortfalls.  You can read the entire article here.

Rich Roesler of the Spokesman Review becomes the latest member of the Capitol press corps to take a job with the state.  According to his Eye on Olympia blog:

And this time, it’s me.

After nearly 9 years covering Olympia for an Eastern Washington audience, I’m taking a public-affairs job with the state insurance commissioner’s office.

I love what I do, and am deeply grateful to the Spokesman-Review and to everyone who’s clicked on this blog or read my stories. But given the worrisome state of newspapers — round after round of layoffs, a pay cut, a furlough — it would have felt irresponsible to not jump at a job that feels like a good fit and a new opportunity.

S-R management is still figuring out what to do, but early indications are that they’ll replace me and keep the bureau open. That’s good news. I’ve watched the permanent press corps here dwindle down to 8 people, and Eastern Washington in particular needs some eyes on the puzzle palace that Olympia can be.

It’s good news that the Spokesman-Review is planning to keep an Olympia bureau open, but Roesler was a fine writer who added a unique perspective to political coverage and he will be missed.

Today’s Seattle Times featured an opinion piece by Higher Education Coordination Board Executive Director Ann Daley on the trend toward lower state funding for our public baccalaureate institutions.  According to the article:

THE budget cuts to our public higher-education institutions this biennium were deep enough to cause some to suggest we have crossed the Rubicon — a point of no return.

Are we entering new territory in which our public institutions rely primarily on tuition revenues and operate largely as private entities? Do we need a new public/private funding model? Or will we confirm there is a fundamental public purpose to higher education that merits a public investment?

In 2009-2011, for the first time in history, four of Washington’s six baccalaureate institutions will receive more operating revenue from tuition and fees than from state appropriations. They are University of Washington, Central Washington University, Evergreen State College and Western Washington University.

Eastern Washington University will receive only 51 percent of its operating revenue from the state.

These figures are in stark contrast to the previous biennium, when state support for baccalaureate institutions averaged 64 percent of total operating costs.

Not all agree the trend toward a privatized funding model is inevitable. Many would argue that it is not advisable. But we have reached a crossroads, and the decisions we make today will impact our state for generations to come.

The article also talks about the value — economic and social — of higher education to the state, challenges to meeting our goals for higher education, and the HEC Board’s charge to develop a new System Design Plan.  You can read the entire opinion piece here.

Crosscut features a good article by Floyd McKay on Western Washington University and how it is facing a challenging budget environment.  New WWU President Bruce Shephard made headlines early in his tenure by cutting Western’s football program.  As the article notes, bigger challenges awaited:

On Western’s campus, the football flap was overshadowed by budget issues as all Washington campuses took budget hits in November, then more with the legislative budget, and now WWU faces about a 2 percent reduction this summer. Western has become, Shepard notes, a “publicly supported” rather than a “public” institution, as state support drops this year to 43 percent, from 60 percent during 2008-2009.

Shepard says the biggest surprise of his freshman year was the lack of support at the Legislature; he spent most of his teaching career in Oregon, where state support has plummeted in recent years, and expected more from Washington. But legislators told him their voters believe higher education is “elitist” and “they [voters] don’t see their kids going to your university.”

The new guy in town has discovered what veterans have learned over the years: A policy of limiting state support for public colleges and universities also limits enrollment, which in turn means fewer Washington families see their children at a state school. When things turn tough, the downward spiral accelerates, further eroding public support.

Many of the themes will be familiar to those who followed the budget debates earlier this year.  You can read the entire Crosscut article here.

Crosscut features a thoughtful article by State Rep. Reuven Carlyle (36th District) who proposes a number of ways our current economic crisis might be changed into an opportunity.  According to Rep. Carlyle:

We need to gain the courageous honesty to embrace this crisis, to transform how our state government operates, and to promote meaningful reform. We need to tackle old problems with new energy and spirit. We need to redefine our very definition of “leadership” so we’re not looking for someone to push from the top but to unleash from the bottom. We need bold systems-thinking about structural challenges because our old model of tinkering with the symptoms is no longer working.

He lays out a number of specific proposals in health care, education, tax reform and government reform.   At the core of all of them is a call for deep structural changes in the way government services are provided.  Agree with his proposals or not, the article is sure to spark a lively discussion and is well worth reading.

Tim Eyman’s latest initiative (I-1033) appears likely to qualify for November’s ballot.  The initiative would tie state revenue increases to the rate of inflation plus population growth, with excess money being used to reduce property taxes.   Writing in the Seattle Times, Andrew Garber picks up what is sure to be the flavor of the debate come this fall.

“Our property taxes keep growing faster and faster and government keeps getting bigger and bigger. The people are losing control,” Eyman said at a news conference Thursday.

Critics of the measure say it has serious flaws, will hurt the state’s economy and will make it more difficult for the state to recover from the recession. . .

Opponents compare Eyman’s initiative to Colorado’s Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights, TABOR, which also used a population, plus inflation formula to limit state spending.

That law, they say, led to sharp drops in funding for public schools and higher education. Colorado voters, in 2005, suspended the constitutional limit for five years.

Eyman argues his measure is more targeted because the Colorado law applied to all governments including school districts. I-1033 only affects city, county and state government.

In addition, Eyman’s initiative can be changed by lawmakers with a simple majority vote after two years and the Legislature can try to increase spending above the revenue cap by asking voters for more money.

Signatures still need to be checked, but it appears the number submitted is enough to offset any that are invalid or duplicates.  I-1033 is the only initiative with a chance to qualify for the ballot.

You can read more about the initiative here. 

Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has written a provocative opinion piece on how the United States should be using the current economic downturn to build the foundation for the next great wave of innovation and prosperity.  Key to Friedman’s argument is more funding for basic research, the importance of research universities such as the UW, and using this time to attract highly skilled foreign workers.  Here’s an excerpt (note that the “Barrett” he refers to is former Intel CEO Craig Barrett):

We should be taking advantage. Now is when we should be stapling a green card to the diploma of any foreign student who earns an advanced degree at any U.S. university, and we should be ending all H-1B visa restrictions on knowledge workers who want to come here. They would invent many more jobs than they would supplant. The world’s best brains are on sale. Let’s buy more!

Barrett argues that we should also use this crisis to: 1) require every state to benchmark their education standards against the best in the world, not the state next door; 2) double the budgets for basic scientific research at the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the National Institute of Standards and Technology; 3) lower the corporate tax rate; 4) revamp Sarbanes-Oxley so that it is easier to start a small business; 5) find a cost-effective way to extend health care to every American.

We need to do all we can now to get more brains connected to more capital to spawn more new companies faster. As Jeff Immelt, the chief of General Electric, put it in a speech on Friday, this moment is “an opportunity to turn financial adversity into national advantage, to launch innovations of lasting value to our country

You can read the entire Friedman article here.

Also, last session lawmakers passed a bill allowing foreign professional workers in the state on the H-1B visa mentioned in Friedman’s article to receive in-state tuition rates.

Expect this discussion to become even more prominent in coming months.

While people often focus on the state revenue forecast, the caseload forecast is also a critical piece of the budget picture.  Caseload forecasters predict everything from how many kids will show up at school in the fall to how many people will need state medical assistance.  Today’s update shows increased caseload costs over the new biennium of $250 million from the prior forecast in March.  Officials are hoping to manage the cost increases using a number of spending restrictions issued by Gov. Gregoire last month.  Here’s a story on the caseload forecast from Brad Shannon in The Olympian.

The Office of Financial Management (OFM) has released its annual population estimate and it shows a slowing growth rate.  Chief demographer Theresa Lowe pegs the state population at 6,668,020, with the growth rate slowing to 1.2% per year (down from the 2006 high of 1.9%).  As with everything else these days, the economy is the main reason:

“The continued housing contraction nationwide and poor economic conditions appear to be limiting the mobility of the population usually influenced by labor market opportunities,” Lowe said. “Many job seekers are finding it difficult to sell their homes or to relocate to accept employment at the price of paying two mortgages for an extended period.”

Basic market forces throughout the United States have also reduced immigration, and have resulted in many resident and situational immigrants returning home. Washington has relatively large Hispanic and Asian populations, ranking seventh among the states in the number of Asians and 13th in the number of Hispanic/Latinos. The large in and out flows associated with these populations are affected by present economic conditions, another factor resulting in the slowdown of state growth.

The annual population determinations by OFM are based on actual change in school enrollment, housing, voters, driver’s licenses and other indicator data, and are used to distribute revenues to local governments for public services and transportation. These annual figures are also used to develop and validate population forecasts, which help to anticipate changes in population-driven budget expenditures.

You can read more about the OFM report here.

Adam Wilson of the Olympian is leaving to become Gov. Gregoire’s speechwriter.  He covered state government for the paper, along with political editor Brad Shannon who is remaining.  The paper says it will replace Wilson, but since last year the number of reporters covering the statehouse has been cut by about half.  You can read more about Wilson’s departure here.