Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Higher education gets no love from lawmakers

CARSON CITY - Nevada lawmakers gave a cold shoulder Thursday to higher education, leaving university presidents resigned to the fact that they will have to make some deep cuts to their budget.

The question is, how deep and where?

Lawmakers seemed unfazed as the leaders of UNLV, UNR and Community College of Southern Nevada pleaded for money to maintain current services while the state braces for a revenue crunch.

Several lawmakers said a slowdown in enrollment growth - which the universities say is partly the result of tougher admission standards - justified trims in the higher-education budget.

"We cannot fund $26 million for students you don't have," Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, told UNLV President David Ashley. In addition to reduced growth in the state's sales-tax revenue stream, the university is facing registration fee shortfalls of $28 million.

When enrollment is growing, the state is expected to pay more, said Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno. But the university has to face the consequences, he said, when growth slows.

The state's universities need to brace for the reality that there won't be enough money to bail them out, Raggio and Buckley said. They demanded that university presidents give them more details on exactly what they would have to cut and better prioritize their funding needs.

Raggio even cut off CCSN's vice president of finance, Patty Charlton, for not addressing budget cuts to his satisfaction. Charlton was making the case that the college's operations were already so bare bones that the only way to save more money would be mass layoffs and possibly the closure of extension sites.

The 2 1/2-hour budget hearing was a composed battle of wills, as a calm and seemingly indifferent Raggio repeatedly reminded university officials that the state would have to live within its budget and university officials passionately made their case for needing every dollar.

The mood led Executive Vice Chancellor Dan Klaich to quip that his father kept a baseball bat under the seat of his truck that he called "the explainer."

"I think we've all been hit by the explainer," Klaich said.

The effects on UNLV would be devastating, Ashley said. More than 70 percent of the university's budget pays for academic staffing, so there is no way to spare classes - or whole programs - if the budget is trimmed.

Ashley and UNR President Milton Glick, who faces a similar predicament, said they would probably have to borrow money to sustain targeted programs for three to five years, to allow currently enrolled students to finish their coursework.

Glick said if he left vacant every unfilled job and eliminated all part-time instructors and staff, one-third of the classes at UNR would be lost at a savings of $6 million. But he would still be short $3 million in budget cuts asked of him .

Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, said she wasn't moved by the presidents' passions.

"We always hear the most drastic predictions," said Leslie, a Washoe County special ty courts administrator. "We're a pretty sophisticated, unemotional group."

In the end, Raggio tossed them a bone, saying that he was not unsympathetic , and that when revenue forecasts are updated May 1, they might find more breathing room in the budget.

Chancellor Jim Rogers, uncharacteristically dressed in a coat and tie, said Raggio justified his strategy of not budging on the system's budget priorities until the very end. He had gone head to head with Gov. Jim Gibbons about his refusal to volunteer cuts earlier in the week.

"You don't give up anything in the short term because in the end it might all work out," Rogers said.

archive