Mistake costs community college $7.6 million

Jennifer Knight

Thursday, April 4, 2002 | 11:09 a.m.

The Community College of Southern Nevada was shortchanged $7.6 million last year due to a mistake in state funding, forcing the college to curtail growth, forgo student services and limit class offerings, school officials say.

University system officials say the problem was an incorrect funding request CCSN submitted for the 2001-2003 budget cycle.

Some CCSN classes were budgeted for a lower amount of funding than they should have been. Consequently, CCSN did not receive the amount of resources needed to cover expenses for each class, Dan Miles, university system vice chancellor of finance and administration, said.

"I'm not surprised that there were errors," Miles said. "I'm surprised at the size of the error. I believe there are errors at every campus. Probably nothing to this degree, though."

CCSN officials claim the error was pointed out in time to be corrected -- but it never was.

"At the time of those discussions, I was representing Great Basin College (in Elko), and I remember discussions about an error in the budget," CCSN President Ron Remington said. "That error was pointed out while the Legislature was in session."

Patty Charlton, CCSN's interim vice president of finance and administration, who helped present that budget, did not return repeated phone calls from the Sun.

The only other person who handled that budget request was Allen Ruter, who died in May 2001, shortly after the Legislative session began.

What both parties agree on is that the $7.6 million mistake could have statewide implications. Because the amount will now be included in the new budget for 2003-2005 as a technical correction, the Legislature could decide not to rectify the mistake.

That would mean the university system would absorb the $7.6 million, taking the amount out of its base budget. Other institutions, such as the Nevada State College at Henderson and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, could end up with less of the overall pie because of it, Miles said.

"If that correction had been made, the other institutions would have taken the hit (financially)," Miles said.

At the time the $7.6 million error was overlooked, the Nevada State College at Henderson was also asking for $7 million in funding. The two requests are unrelated, Chancellor Jane Nichols said.

The Legislature ended up giving the state college only $3.7 million, said Nichols, who heads the university and community college system.

But the state college -- along with the eight other institutions sharing the state's higher education budget -- did end up getting a larger portion of funding last biennium because of the $7.6 million mistake, Miles said. "The state college is like every other institution, so it would have gotten a percentage reduction like everyone else," Nichols said.

CCSN requested was $172 million, instead of the $180 million it needed. But the Legislature funded the entire higher education budget at 81 percent. Had CCSN's full amount been considered, it would have received an extra $6.1 million, Nichols said.

If university system officials opt to correct the mistake in the 2003-2005 budget, CCSN's budget would be $7.6 million more than originally expected, Miles said.

Nichols said she expects the governor and Legislature to fix the CCSN oversight. But with scarce resources from the state expected in the next biennium, she admitted the picture is unclear for other institutions, especially one as fragile as the state college.

"If we end up getting students at the state college, we obviously can't close the doors of an institution that is operating," Nichols said.

Remington said regardless of where the mistake came from, the focus now is on fixing it.

"The good thing is, they are rectifying this now," Remington said. "In the meantime, we are making do."