Lawmaker frustrated over scholarship funding

Thursday, Feb. 10, 2005 | 9:02 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The chairman of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee said Wednesday that the Millennium Scholarship program may be ended or transferred to the control of the university system, but the speaker of the Assembly said later that won't happen.

Assemblyman Morse Arberry, D-Las Vegas, told Treasurer Brian Krolicki, whose office runs the project, "Don't be surprised if we ask you to phase this out."

Arberry's statements prompted immediate adverse reaction from the office of Gov. Kenny Guinn, the man who started the Millennium Scholarships.

A phase-out of the program is "not going to happen," Guinn's spokesman Greg Bortolin said. "The governor would go to the mat to preserve this. The governor will do whatever is necessary to preserve this."

That won't be necessary, said Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, who is on the committee with Arberry. He said Arberry wasn't really saying that his committee might end the scholarship program.

"He (Arberry) expressed frustration on how it's being funded," Perkins said.

Perkins said the program needs to continue and he will present a plan to continue it for as long as 20 years.

Arberry later acknowledged, however, that he had not talked to his colleagues about phasing out the scholarships. But he said he was "going to take a hard look at it."

After the committee hearing, Arberry said he was "trying to light a fire" under Krolicki to come up with some solid ideas to preserve the program.

But Arberry also repeated his statement that the money might be shifted to the colleges that are best at running scholarship programs.

"There may not be a Millennium Scholarship program," said Arberry after the hearing.

The program would be better off in the schools and scholarships should be "based on need," he said.

Currently the scholarships are awarded to each Nevada high school student who maintains a B or better grade point average, regardless of his or her family's income.

Arberry said the state should fulfill its commitment to students already enrolled the program, but, he adeed, the students in the program now don't know if they will continue to get scholarship money.

Arberry, whose committee will decide the fate of the scholarship program, said Guinn's suggestion to sell $100 million in bonds or others' suggestion to use the state's surplus cash to bail out the "floundering" system are not well thought out.

The program is funded with money the state receives from the settlement with tobacco companies. But that revenue is declining as smoking drops.

Krolicki said he backs the Millennium Scholarship program because it ensures that the state will have an educated work force in the future. He called it one of "the most precious programs" in the state.

Arberry said the Millennium Scholarships are like a "fish out of water ... not breathing very well ... losing oxygen."