Budget-bashing bothers lawmakers Harter’s, regents’ reaction to funding called whining

Monday, May 17, 1999 | 11:38 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- A benefactor who gives $23.7 million usually doesn't get kicked in the shins.

But that's what some regents and officials of the University and Community College System of Nevada delivered to state legislators who approved their budget. And lawmakers are irked.

"I'm just tired of their whining," Assembly Majority Leader Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, said. "There was only so much money, and we moved it primarily to Southern Nevada."

A Senate-Assembly budget subcommittee agreed Friday to allocate an extra $23.7 million to the system to handle increased growth and to take a step at curing the disparity in funding schools within the system. That's above the $800 million budget proposed by Gov. Kenny Guinn.

System shortchanged

After the Friday vote by the subcommittee, Chancellor Richard Jarvis, UNLV President Carol Harter and Regents Mark Alden and Steve Sisolak criticized the decision, saying the system is getting shortchanged.

"This wasn't good news," Harter said. "We lost $6 million in these last two hours." She said Guinn had restored $5 million to the UNLV budget to correct errors. "Yet the subcommittee moved that money over to take care the expected growth of students.

"There is not enough money to teach the number of students they are projecting we can enroll," Harter said. "We can't teach that many students and pay the salaries we need to."

"If they don't like what happened," Assemblyman Morse Arberry, D-Las Vegas, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, quipped, "we can go back and reopen the budget and take out some of the money."

Sisolak and Alden, both of Las Vegas, said Saturday an effort is being made to call an emergency meeting of the Board of Regents this week. "We need to clarify what happened," Alden said.

"There is total confusion," Sisolak said. "I don't think the regents understand it." He added the presidents of the campuses may not have a full grasp of what occurred.

"This is not only southern regents, but I've talked with northern regents who are upset about what happened," he said.

Regent Chairwoman Jill Derby was out of town for the weekend and could not be reached for comment.

Sisolak, while happy with the extra money, said the allocation would still mean some Southern Nevada students would not be able to get classes and that would delay their graduation. The subcommittee, he said, did not go far enough in solving the funding inequity between the campuses.

An independent study showed there was a $24 million disparity between campuses. UNLV is being shortchanged about $7 million and the Community College of Southern Nevada needs about $15 million to achieve equity, according to the study.

The subcommittee allocated $11.7 million for equity as a first step. The study recommended a phased-in approach to closing the gap. There will be a study in the next 18 months to look at the full issue of funding the university system.

In harm's way

Alden said the Southern Nevada legislators are "in harm's way" in getting re-elected because they did not take care the campuses in Las Vegas. He said the regents submitted a budget to handle the problems. And he said this was probably the best board of regents ever.

The subcommittee "totally ignored" the equity funding study, he said Saturday. He said the subcommittee looked like "they were trading pork ... pork trade USA."

"The governor kept all his promises, but I walked away from the (Friday) meeting in shock," Alden said.

Perkins took a different view, noting that the current inequity is the result of years of poor budgeting by the regents.

"A lot of the problems we're in is because of (the regents). We wouldn't have inequities if we didn't have budgets submitted to us by the regents in the past.

"We would be able to move more money to Southern Nevada if the president of UNLV knew how to deal with people," he said. "But when personalities go like that, there is only so much we can do."

Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, said the decisions on the budget were "pretty much dominated by Southern Nevada" legislators.

"If I'm ever impoverished," he said, "I want to be shortchanged that way," referring to the $23.7 million the university system received.

But even $23.7 million was not enough, Jarvis noted. "The money is not there to hire faculty at our current average salary. I have serious quality concerns about that," he said.

"This means we can only hire faculty at lower salary. I don't see how the universities can maintain the quality of their faculty."

Raggio defended the decision. The budget provides enough money to hire new faculty at 90 percent of the current average salary at each campus. In the past, he noted, the Legislature has funded new hiring at only 85 percent.

In fact, he said, that is what the university asked for in its budget request.

Budget analysts for the Legislature gave an example that if the average salary at one campus was $60,000, it would receive 90 percent of that to hire a new person. Usually new faculty members are not hired at the same rate as the people they are replacing, they said.