Colorado colleges must slash $30 million

We've been working for a while on a way to save higher education in Colorado.  It's a complicated process and it's hard to explain in a news story.  That's apparent by the comments after the article.

Presidents want say on setting tuition
By Berny Morson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published January 16, 2009 at 9:12 p.m.

College students could see deep changes in the way tuition is formulated as a result of the looming budget cuts announced Friday, some key lawmakers believe.

A new strategy would mean higher tuition for some students to offset the budget cuts. But some of the additional money would go to financial aid to keep college affordable for disadvantaged students.

Trying to keep tuition down while repeatedly chopping state aid to the schools can only erode the quality of education, Rep. Jack Pommer, D- Boulder, vice chairman of the Joint Budget Committee, said Friday.

"We're essentially consuming these universities," Pommer said of the state's four research institutions.

He added: "We can probably get another 20 years out of them before they're essentially worthless."

Higher education must cut $30 million from the budget for the current school year, with more proposed cuts to be released next Friday.

Higher education was slashed during the last recession, at the beginning of this decade. Funding still has not climbed back to 2002 levels when amounts are adjusted for inflation, according to the governor's budget office.

For years, Colorado's college presidents have been seeking more management flexibility, including more leeway in setting tuition, which is capped annually in the state spending bill. Lawmakers, including budget committee members such as Pommer, have been saying for several weeks that they're open to more flexibility for the colleges.

University of Colorado President Bruce Benson said Friday, "Give us some freedom. We will be responsible. We will be accountable, and we will damn sure keep it affordable for our citizens."

CU will absorb nearly $8 million of the $30 million cut to higher education, under the proposal that went from the governor's office to the budget committee Friday.

Benson said CU started looking at savings last March, when businesses began reporting financial problems. Some CU jobs have gone unfilled since last summer.

Gov. Bill Ritter said he's not ready to endorse a flexibility plan until he sees details.

Even the $30 million cut protects most of the gains that have been made in higher education funding over the last two years, Ritter said.

College tuition increased 9 percent this year at the state's four research schools - CU, Colorado State University, University of Northern Colorado and the Colorado School of Mines. Other four-year schools and community colleges saw lesser increases.

Budget committee members, who draft the annual state spending bill, had been looking at similar increases for next year.



      windbourne writes:

      If you dems ARE going to cut their budget, then give them freedom to figure things out.


      farsidefan writes:

      Windbourne,
      Why should the Dems do that when the Repubs never did it when they slashed Higher Ed budgets the last 15 years ?


      SL10 writes:

      Voting NO to the amendments hurt Colorado.

      Hey, the people of Colorado had a chance to vote for a change to improve school funding.

      But, now this is the price of stupidity at the polls.

      Enjoy higher price schools all.


      freefall writes:

      I moved here for the great affordable schools and would love to stay here. But the rate hikes are above and beyond other states so I am looking at transferring. Hell, there's even a couple of schools I could go to that out of state (tuition) would be lower than Colorado's in- state and get the same respect.

This is just plain wrong.  The in-state tuition at CU and CSU are about average for similar schools around the country.  We've had some significant increases in tuition, but so have a lot of other state Universities.  Out-of-state tuition is certainly high, but we can't subsidize students who aren't from Colorado.

      Sundog writes:

      Yep, just keep jacking up the tuition to close the shortfall. Surely $30k isn't too much for one semester. After graduation they can quickly jump to assistant manager at Sonic...if anyone can still afford a hamburger by then.


      Mile_Hi_Dave writes:

      Hmmmmmmmmmm...didn't all the casino towns just vote to raise the limts and stay open longer? Doesn't that mean more revenue for those towns? Even if it increases the taxes only by 50%, I am sure, with a 2000% increase in the limits, I am being conservative using 50% as the value for the increase in tax revenue generated up there. Back to my point...why not use this money to increase, not decrease educational spending? Obviously, these towns of less than 200 people can't use all that revenue, at least not for the purposes they are supposed to....Heck, in a town of 110 people, the board is running out of ways to spend those tax dollars, so they are fixing up their own homes, LOL, and illegally moving money for services that are not provided for by their agreement for the use of these tax $$. I see no reason to be buying doggie doors when a student can't go to school because of a lack of funds! Just my 2 cents...

This is a good idea.  Unfortunately, the casino can do pretty much anything they want.  They authorized themselves by sponsoring an amendment to the state constitution.  Last November, they ran another amendment to increase the amounts people can bet and to increase the hours that they're open.  The proposal went right to the voters who approved it.

The legislature can't change the constitution, so we don't have much control over the tax revenue the casinos generate.  Their latest change to the constitution directs some of the tax revenue to community colleges.  That's good for them, but it doesn't help the rest of higher education.  And it's not going to make the community colleges rich.  Since casinos in Colorado write their own laws, they keep a lot of the money for themselves.

      classiccoupe writes:

      Where are our values? Certainly not in education! Like everything else, one has to wonder where all the money involved is really going. Could there be greed and special interests involved? No wonder America is losing its academic standing in the world. As in the past, the nations with the most knowledge and wisdom will ultimately come out on top. It appears as though this nation is now on a losing path.

You don't have to wonder, you can just look through the budget.

      mytwosense writes:

      This is one reason why I voted against the amendment that, in theory, was supposed to raise gambling funds so that part of them could be diverted to education. I knew it was just going to remain a theory!

The casinos wrote the amendment and the money will go exactly where they wanted it to go.

      farmboy writes:

      Remember Referendum C? Money from that was supposed to fund colleges and universities.

      What happened to it?

Even some college presidents have asked this question.  Those of us who campaigned for Referendum C said it would raise enough revenue to keep the state from having to close the colleges and universities in 2006.  It did.  We tried to be clear about that.  Referendum C kept us from having to make even more cuts to the budget, it didn't restore all of the money lost during the 1999 and 2000 tax cuts and the recession that followed.

      Salchak_Toka writes:

      Desperate times call for desperate measures, and if Colorado won't support higher education (and yes, when all is said and onde, it WILL NOT support higher education), then it could at least craft an orderly dissolution of several state institutions in order to strengthen the rest.

      One four-year campus on the Western Slopes is plenty; one campus south of Denver; one campus in Denver; CU-Boulder, CSU, and Mines. That's it; even that's probably too many.

      Mesa State and Western State? Get rid of one, and merge its resources (and as much of its personnel as feasible) into the other. The result is one possibly viable campus instead of two on life support. Get rid of UNC; move its portable assets and best personnel to CSU. You get the idea. Some consolidation of the community colleges might be worthwhile too, but since they're funded differently, this probably can't be accomplished by some kind of statewide plan.

      Some folks will be hurt, but if we just wait for all the universities to wither and collapse, everyone will be hurt.

      Only problem with this scenario is that it requires some courage on the part of our "leaders." These are the last people to demonstrate courage. Too many legislators sitting in districts with colleges in them, and nobody wants to be the guy who sacrificed his college for the greater good. As a result, most of the colleges will fail.

Touche

Zap! State to take $632 million hit

Gov. Ritter announces across-the-board cuts, warns others may be on the way.
By CHARLES ASHBY
CHIEFTAIN DENVER BUREAU

DENVER - Gov. Bill Ritter's budget experts Friday proposed nearly $632 million in program cuts, cash fund transfers and dipping into the state's reserve account to balance this year's budget.

Virtually no part of the state's government was left uncut.

From K-12 education to transportation to public health programs, the governor's budget director, Todd Saliman, said that because of cuts made during the last recession earlier this decade, there's not much with which to play.

"What we focused on were efforts to ensure that we protected life, safety and public health," Saliman said. "The governor's plan on this entire thing was to try to fairly distribute the pain across the entire state government. The challenge here is that the shortfall is so dramatic that it's really going to be difficult to leave any part of state services unscathed." The cuts and fund transfers include about $43.4 million in capital construction projects, including several in Southern Colorado; $10 million, or half of the money the state spends on tourism promotion; $4.9 million from charter school capital construction projects; $45.8 million from all public schools from a reduction in the per pupil increase they received this year and $11.3 million in maintaining the governor's hiring freeze. A big chunk of the budget-balancing plan is coming from three funds designed to compensate workers for injuries. Saliman's office is projecting that taking $111 million out of the funds - major medical, subsequent injury and workers' compensation - won't have any long-term impacts because they will replenish themselves by the 2010-11 fiscal year.

The money his office is proposing to take doesn't deplete them entirely, but leaves enough for them to operate for the rest of this fiscal year, and next, Saliman wrote in his report to the Joint Budget Committee, which came in a 3-inch-thick loose leaf binder.

Saliman projects that the major medical fund, for example, will have rebuilt itself to have about $131 million in it by 2010.

While state lawmakers bemoaned the cuts as necessary, at least two of them questioned whether the state shouldn't rethink everything it does.

Rep. Jack Pommer, D-Boulder, and vice chairman of the JBC, said that because of budget constraints the state is facing - the revenue limits under the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights and other constitutional provisions that require increased spending - Colorado's annual spending plan never recovers fully each time there is an economic downturn.

As a result, Pommer suggested the Legislature consider revamping everything the state pays for from the ground up.

"I believe we have at least an ongoing billion-dollar deficit, and it seems like we either can cut everything or as much as we can, to the point where we're doing a lousy job on everything, or we can say that Colorado no longer can afford the government that it has," Pommer said.

"This is a rare occasion when I am in agreement with Representative Pommer," added House Minority Leader Mike May, R-Parker.

Actually we agree more than rarely.  We even passed a bill together, the Colorado Indoor Clean Air Act, which banned smoking in most restaurants and offices. Before that we carried a bill opening up Colorado's phone system to more competition, but we got clobbered by both of our parties.

"As we're looking at where we're spending our money, we ought to evaluate what it is we can do very well, and what we can't do at all instead of, ‘Let's do everything mediocre, leaving a dollar here and a dollar there.’ ”

Regardless of that conservation, individual lawmakers and special interest groups already have started circling the wagons on their pet programs.

Rep. Al White, R-Hayden and another JBC member, is a longtime proponent of tourism promotion, saying it's an economic stimulus program that's proven to work.

White immediately criticized the governor's plan to cut $10 million out of that $19 million program.

"The governor's talked a lot about doing everything we can to enhance our economy and create jobs," White said. "When I look at our tourism program in the state of Colorado . . . I'm not sure I understand how the governor's consideration of economic enhancement and job creation really fit with this $10 million cut. I know that the governor is considering other programs, (but) this is one that we know works."

Sen. Abel Tapia, D-Pueblo, who also sits on the six-member JBC, said White has a point, and expects the Legislature will reach a compromise on that part of the cuts.

Still, Tapia said he's girding himself to dealing with others who equally have good reasons not to see their programs get trimmed.

"When you make cuts, there's always fallout," Tapia said. "I know I'm going to get inundated by every special interest group that there is that they're going to be hurt by this. I'll sit and listen, but at the end of the day we've got to balance the budget. We don't have the money."

CUTTING THE BUDGET


DENVER - Here's a breakdown on the governor's proposed budget cuts and cash transfers:

- Reduce executive branch departments and programs, $166.3 million.

- Delay payment to Fire & Police Association pension, $34.8 million.

- Cash fund transfers, $207.1 million.

- Higher Education Maintenance and Reserve Fund transfer, $47.2 million.

- Vendor fee change, $12.8 million.

- Gaming revenue diversion, $11.9 million.

- Other revenue diversions, $10.7 million.

- Dip into Emergency Reserve Fund, $134.1 million.

- Unallocated, but authorized expenditures, $7 million.

TOTAL: $631.9 million

ON CHOPPING BLOCK


DENVER - Here's a list of capital construction projects in Southern Colorado that may get the budget ax:

- Suicide prevention programs at Colorado Mental Health Institutes at Pueblo and in Fort Logan, $3.3 million.

- Colorado State Fair infrastructure improvements, $2.3 million.

- Colorado State Penitentiary II expansion, $2 million.

- Homelake Veterans Nursing Home domicile renovation: $1.3 million.

- Buena Vista Correctional Facility repairs/replacements, $1.3 million.

- Alamosa State Patrol Troop office, $1.2 million.

- Lamar Community College upgrades, $677,467.

- Colorado State University-Pueblo upgrades, $669,689.

- Fort Lyon Correctional Facility wastewater work, $540,486.

- Colorado Women's Correctional Facility lock/door replacements, $466,167.

- Pueblo Community College electrical replacement, $370,000.

Governor proposes cutting $632 million from budget

DENVER (Map, News) - Gov. Bill Ritter recommended Friday that lawmakers cut $632 million from the current state budget, with major reductions for higher education, public education and health care. He also warned that more cuts are coming.

Ritter said his top priorities are public safety and public health, and despite his proposed cuts, he said he wants to protect higher education as much as he can.

Todd Saliman, Ritter's budget director, told lawmakers the state faces a $632 million shortfall in this year's $18.6 billion operating budget - and that that figure could soar to more than $1 billion over the next two years.

I guess this is technically accurate, but it doesn't describe the problem very well.  The $18.6 billion is Colorado's total budget.  The general fund is part of it, but is only about $7.5 billion.  The $632 million shortfall is in the general fund and $632 billion is a much bigger part of $7.5 billion than it is of $18.6 billion.

"The governor's plan is to try to fairly distribute the pain across the entire state government," Saliman told the Joint Budget Committee, which will have to vote on final cuts in coming weeks before working on more cuts for next year's budget.

Ritter recommended eliminating $20 million from state contributions to public schools, $5 million for charter school construction and $1.2 million set aside for teacher recruiting.

He called for cutting $30 million from higher education and $3.1 million from the children's basic health plan. Another $13 million could be saved by putting a cap of $5,000 for businesses that are allowed to keep sales taxes to cover expenses.

Ritter also wants to freeze 64 construction projects on top of 12 already frozen, saving $95 million.

Jane Urschel, deputy director of the Colorado Association of School Boards, said school boards don't want to get into a fight with higher education over which branch of education bears the brunt of the crisis. She said eliminating programs for early childhood education may just be the beginning.

"Promises can't be kept. There's no money," she said.

University of Colorado President Bruce Benson said the state needs to loosen the reins on colleges and universities to give them greater freedom. He said higher education never fully recovered from the last recession that began in 2002 and that it's again on the chopping block.

Benson said state laws that bar universities from entering multiyear contracts, for example, make it almost impossible to work with other schools on research grants. He said new construction has been put on hold, and only critical positions are being filled.

Rep. Jack Pommer, a member of the Joint Budget Committee, said it could take 10 years for higher education to recover under the budget proposal. He noted that many services, including prison guards and child welfare, are in jeopardy.

Actually, I was pointing out that some parts of state government still haven't recovered from our last round of budget cutting that lasted from 2001 through 2003.  The state contribution to higher ed would have gotten back up to it's 2001 level this year if we weren't cutting it again. 

We still have fewer correctional officers than we did in 2001.

Child welfare is a particularly horrible example.  Over the last few years a number of children have died in foster care in Colorado.  An investigation determined that a key reason for the deaths was our lack of training for child welfare case workers.  We cut the training during the last recession.  We're planning to reinstate it, but it's going to mean cutting some other critical area of the budget.

"It seems like we can either cut everything, or as much as we can, to a point where we're doing a lousy job on everything, or we can say that Colorado can no longer afford the government that it had before the tax cuts and the recession and all of that, get rid of some big things, and then do a good job on all of the rest," Pommer said.