Olympia
Update No. 3 • February 22,
2008
House Supplemental
Operating & Construction Budgets
From: Larry Ganders,
Assistant to the President
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House slices
“Stars” program
A state biennial budget that provides a $35 million pay increase for K-12
teachers but holds university budgets nearly even is poised to pass the state
House of Representatives Monday.
The budget also contained a surprise cut to the state research universities,
slicing more than $1.5 million from a program that is
designed to recruit key “star researchers” for UW and WSU.
Except for the “Stars” cut, the WSU budget was virtually unchanged, increasing
only four tenths of one percent in the House proposal (Substitute House Bill
2687.) Most of the $12 million in additional moneys provided by the House for
higher education goes to community college employees and aerospace
apprenticeship programs. No major budget requests by Washington State University
were funded.
Plans for a new Veterinary Medical Research Building in Pullman got a boost from
the House capital construction budget (Substitute House Bill 2765) that passed
out of committee today. The proposal contains $2 million of the $7.4 million
requested to begin design of the building.
The House
budgets were released less than a week after the state Revenue Forecast
predicted a $423 million drop in revenues to finance this biennial budget. Just days earlier, many had been
expecting a forecast drop of half that amount. About $231 million of the lost
revenues is attributed to a drop in collections in the real estate excise tax.
Despite a lot of pre-budget dialogue in House committees prompted by the events
at Northern Illinois University, there was no funding to improve safety at
higher education campuses.
Some one-time funding for equipment was recommended by Gov. Christine Gregoire
but is not contained in any of the House budget bills.
The House did include funding for a single mental health counselor to be added
at WSU. There was also no funding for Global Animal Health or Agriculture
requests, and no funding for core computer programs. A number of key legislators
raised concerns about Global Animal Health Funding in Appropriations Committee
caucuses but no amendments were adopted Friday. The full House of
Representatives is expected to pass the budget Monday.
The future of such proposals will now rest with the state Senate.
WSU’s largest gain in the budget was $1.6 million to fix a technical error that
was made over the allocation of salary monies in the last biennial budget.
But nearly
half of that gain was offset by the unexpected cut to the Stars Program, taking
more than three-fourths of the funding for the program impacting UW and WSU.
The $1.5 million cut was funding that was unanimously approved for
release to UW and WSU last January by the new state Economic Development
Commission. The commission decided to invest in recruiting and starting an
international expert in Nanophotonics at UW and a biofuels/bioproducts scientist
at WSU.
WSU’s new
scientist, Birgitt Kiar Ahrin
is a world class microbiologist from Denmark who was in Olympia last week to
meet with Gov. Gregoire. She will lead WSU efforts from the new Bioproducts
Science & Engineering Laboratory Building in Richland, where Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory scientists will also be housed. The building is located on
the campus of WSU Tri-Cities, across the street from PNNL. Among the areas where
she is an expert, is in the conversion of cellulosic materials like wheat straw
into fuel. The UW is now actively recruiting Michael Hochberg from the
California Institute of Technology.
The cut is
not noticeable in a quick scan of the university budgets as it was made as part
of the budget for the state Department of Community Trade and Economic
Development (CTED.) Efforts to restore
funding as the budget moves to the state Senate are led by Sen. Jim Kastama,
D-Puyallup, and Sen. Jerome Delvin, R-Kennewick.
Other small items funded in the budget include $225,000 for the Ruckelshaus
Center for nurse staffing and land use issues.
The House operating budget proposal also contains $160,000 for “student
collective bargaining” at WSU. The $160,000 funds House Bill 2963, which extends
collective bargaining rights to employees who are WSU
students. The bill was proposed by the United Auto Workers union, which
currently represents graduate teaching assistants and research assistants at the
University of Washington.
“By way of background, I have worked at several institutions where collective
bargaining is authorized and I am supportive of the right to collectively
bargain,” said WSU President Elson Floyd in a letter to legislators about HB
2963.
“In a context such as ours, however, where this right will be extended for the
first time to individuals whose employment duties are intertwined with their
academic programs, I think it is very important to ensure that the enabling
legislation is written as clearly as possible.”
The UW legislation passed in 2002 followed 2 ½ years of discussion between the
union, students and faculty, and administration. There were no discussions with
WSU about the legislation prior to this session. WSU is asking for two
amendments to the bill, which is a copy of the UW statute: one that would
clearly make matters of a fundamentally academic nature under the purview of
faculty and administration, and not subject to bargaining. The second is that
WSU requests that the bargaining units be limited to graduate students, not
undergraduate students.
The amendments have been supported by the WSU Faculty Senate. Both the WSU
Faculty Senate and the Associated Students of Washington State University have
indicated they will oppose the bill unless changes are made. The UAW has opposed
any change to the statute and the bill has passed the state House of
Representatives without amendment.
Sen. Jeannie Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, who chairs the
Senate Labor, Commerce, Research, and Development Committee, has indicated she
will consider changes to the legislation. She was the original sponsor of the UW
student legislation and said some changes are needed to adapt the bill to WSU.
She has scheduled a hearing on the bill for Tuesday afternoon
in her committee. The legislation has been identified as a high priority
of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO.
Olympia Update is produced for persons
interested in state government developments affecting Washington State
University. For more information, go to
www.olympia.wsu.edu. Contacts: Larry Ganders, Assistant to the President,
360-956-2165. From WSU campuses, dial 8-2165. If you wish to subscribe to
Olympia Update directly by email, send a completely blank message from your
e-mail account (no signatures or footers please) to:
subscribe-olympia_update@listserv.energy.wsu.edu
