Wednesday, April 30, 2003 | 11:05 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- University officials are viewing Tuesday's tentative budget approval as a victory for college students in Nevada.
A joint state Senate and Assembly subcommittee agreed on giving the University and Community College System of Nevada $890 million in state funds over the 2003-2005 biennium.
The subcommittee's budget is slightly less than governor recommended, but it still represents a 23.2 percent increase in funding for universities and community colleges, university officials said.
If the recommendation holds up, students will see marked changes on campus, said Jane Nichols, Nevada's higher education chancellor.
"This is a significant improvement over last year," Nichols said. "This will ensure that students will be better served. Students will see more classes available. Our commitment to nursing will be visible. We will be able to plan better."
Under this version of the budget, universities and community colleges will be able to add more classes, hire more teachers, double nursing enrollment, equip the dental school and replace vanishing estate tax funds with a more permanent source of revenue, officials said.
UNLV will still have to raise some money for dental school equipment, and the university system will have to use some of the new budget money to fund nursing enrollment.
The university system's total budget for 2003-2005 is $1.26 billion with $890 million coming from the general fund and the rest coming from student fees and estate taxes.
The governor requested that UCCSN be funded at a level of 86 percent of a complex funding formula, which would equal $910 million. Under the subcommittee's recommended budget it will be funded at 84.45 percent and 84.09 percent in the 2004 and 2005 fiscal years, respectively.
With a lower percentage than the governor or university system asked for, they will receive $20 million less than anticipated. That decrease in funding happened because university system officials found out that they had higher enrollment in 2003 than predicted.
"The committee would have been able to give us the governor's 86 percent had the enrollments stayed the same," said Dan Miles, UCCSN's vice chancellor for finance and administration.
Nichols said she was happy that the "committee gave us what we need."
Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, was careful to warn Nichols that she should not take the subcommittee's budget closure "to the bank" yet, because it could go awry between now and June 2, when the legislative session concludes.
"We can't guarantee anything that happens outside of this session," Raggio said. "As a matter of fact, we can't guarantee that the decisions made today will hold. It all depends on whether we can get two-thirds (of the votes) to support some kind of increase."
Lawmakers are now waiting for the state Economic Forum on May 1. That meeting will reveal how much money the state has coming over the next two years, and based on that lawmakers will know how much they need in taxes to fund their programs.
Carol Harter, president of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said she welcomed the subcommittee's action, while noting the difficult financial situation in which the state finds itself.
"This committee is a big supporter of higher education and they passed a budget with the expectation that there will be tax increases approved," Harter said.
She noted, however, the cut from 86 percent to 84 percent in the funding formula will mean that UNLV will have to cut roughly $7 million from its proposed budget. "We had 4,000 unfunded students last year," Harter said.
Patty Charlton, Community College of Southern Nevada's vice president of finance and administration, said that her institution is operating at about 79 percent of its requested budget, so 84 percent should bring some positive changes.
One of the items Charlton said many people were nervous about was how the Legislature was going to handle the estate tax fund.
The fund is created from a federal tax levied against wealthy estate owners when they die. The tax is distributed to the state where the person died.
That fund is expected to generate about $90 million in revenues for the university system during the two-year period from 2003-2005. But because Congress did away with that tax, the university system will no longer be able to rely on that revenue in the future.
The subcommittee gave more security to the university system by taking over those funds and adding all of the items that it paid for into the General Fund budget.
"It's a huge, huge improvement," Charlton said. "We were very nervous about that,"
Raggio also saw fit to add a few items by relying on $2.2 million that was saved in other areas. Those additions were:
A $4.7 million request to furnish and equip UNLV's dental school was approved at $3 million. Sen. Ray Rawson, R-Las Vegas, said the subcommittee was assured that the university system would come up with the difference.
In the end, Rawson said, the budget closure represented the best deal that legislators could strike given the circumstances.
"There's new money for everybody but it's not what everybody asked for," Rawson said. "It's kind of the nature of this session."
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