Panel starts review of university funding issues

Wednesday, Oct. 27, 1999 | 12:11 p.m.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio told other panel members that such sectionalism "serves no useful purpose" in the effort to achieve funding equity.

The Committee to Study the Funding of Higher Education was authorized in a 1999 measure allocating a $150,000 study of funding formulas within the University and Community College System of Nevada.

Raggio, R-Reno, said he made a commitment for the study to representatives of the UNLV Foundation, whose members had expressed a concern about an imbalance caused by formulas created through a legislative study authorized in 1985.

The 12-member funding committee's efforts expand on a study earlier this year by university regents.

The regents' study found a $24 million inequity that shortchanged UNLV by $7.6 million a year and the Community College of Southern Nevada by $15.2 million a year.

Lawmakers agreed to make up about one-quarter of the inequity identified in the study over the two years of the 1999-2001 budget, about $5.9 million a year.

The new panel includes three members appointed by the Senate, three by the Assembly, three by the Board of Regents and three by Gov. Kenny Guinn.

The committee will make a report by Jan. 1, 2001, in time for the 2001 legislative session.