Budget trimming cuts deep for students

The battle is on: Joint Ways and Means co-chairs release budget trimming sections from Governor's proposed budget

By: Lauren L. Dillard and The Associated Press

Posted: 4/9/07

Oregon legislators will be in Corvallis Tuesday to hear testimony on the budget proposal released by the Joint Ways and Means Committee on March 21.

The budget, proposed by co-chairs of the Joint Ways and Means Committee Sen. Kurt Schrader, D-Canby, and Rep. Mary Nolan, D-Portland, shaved nearly $35 million off of the proposed $875 million the Governor was willing to grant to higher education.

This trimming of the budget could affect OSU by $12 to $15 million, according to OSU Finance and Administration in calculations released late last week.

The budget also included a nearly $275 million decrease in the amount the governor had allocated for Oregon University System construction projects - this affects OSU at nearly $60 million, according to OSU Finance and Administration.

The construction projects drafted into the Governor's Budget included dollars to specifically help OSU; the co-chairs budget includes no such recommendation of funds, though it does include a goal of continuing "capital investment to maintain infrastructure" within the education section of the budget. Funds are not specifically dedicated to projects within the Oregon University System.

Lawmakers will spend the rest of the session resolving the differences between the governor's budget and the co-chairs budget.

The challenge for post-secondary education will be to convince just enough lawmakers that they should be first in line for any extra money, whether freed up from other sources, brought in by higher-than-expected revenues or from any newly levied taxes or fees.

This is where students come in. The field hearings, including the Tuesday hearing in Corvallis, hosted by the Joint Ways and Means Committee are traveling to find out where citizens want dollars to go.

Students said they also plan to show up at the Capitol in droves to plead their case. Several dozen gave up a day of their spring break to spend a lunch hour serving up Top Ramen noodles and peanut butter sandwiches to passers-by in the Capitol building, underscoring the point that under the current system, students often can't afford to buy much else.

Brandi Freeman, a student at Southern Oregon University, said that at 23, she's already $50,000 in debt - with two parents incarcerated, she's been paying her own way since the age of 16.

And though she's been at the Ashland school already for five years, Freeman said she's not going to be graduating soon - budget cuts mean that there are fewer classes on offer, and they tend to fill up fast, making it hard for her to fulfill diploma requirements.

"We've had professors cut in nearly every program," she said. "But they are always willing to offer you more loans."

A recent Oregon Student Association survey of about 4,300 community college and university students found that about 30 percent said that being unable to get into the courses they needed had forced them to spend more time in college, ratcheting up their debt levels.

"I feel like I am in competition with my fellow students, vying for my professor's time," said Jessica Rojas, a student at Lane Community College in Eugene.

Lobbyists for higher education are zeroing in on a rise on the minimum tax charged to corporations - set at $10 in 1931 and unchanged ever since - as the likeliest way to backfill some of their funding. Originally, the governor's office had proposed splitting money generated from the corporate minimum between pre-kindergarten programs, community colleges and workforce development programs.

But signals from Kulongoski's office are now that they'll back putting the entire pot toward post-secondary education, advocates say, perhaps making a rise in the corporate minimum more palatable for business groups, who tend to be big supporters of higher education.

Getting money back into university construction and maintenance could be a harder sell. George Pernsteiner, the chancellor of the Oregon University System, said the $324 million set aside in the governor's budget for collegiate construction would have paid for much needed projects, like a new science building at Portland State, where he said classes are so crowded that some lab sections meet at midnight.

Students have echoed his call. Emily McLain, a 21-year-old political science major at the University of Oregon, said it's not uncommon to see garbage bins placed in the middle of classrooms on campus to catch water from leaking roofs.

But Schrader and Nolan pared available construction money back to $50 million, citing worries about the state's rising debt load, a move that drew praise from Republican lawmakers.

"The co-chairs are legitimately concerned about sustainability," said Rep. Larry Galizio, D-Tigard, who will chair the Ways and Means subcommittee that has jurisdiction over education spending. "But if we do go to recession, there are construction jobs, so that's a potential positive economic impact, balanced against the debt service."

Any strategy higher education advocates pursue can't tiptoe around the 800-pound gorilla in the funding battles in Salem: K-12 education, which got a $210 million boost in Schrader and Nolan's budget, and has the deep-pocketed teachers' union in its corner. At $6.245 billion, word in Salem is that the K-12 budget is a done deal, leaving higher education little chance at chipping off some of the money.

"We are working hard not to be adversaries (with K-12)," said Cam Preus-Braly, the state's commissioner of community colleges.

Still, higher education has never had the same muscle in Salem as the public schools do. Students, after all, are a transitory population, usually out of the system within five years, tough to organize into a coherent lobbying voice. And lawmakers are all too aware that unlike most other state-funded services, universities and community colleges have a ready source of dedicated funding: tuition and fees.

To that end, Pernsteiner said, one strategy will be to spell out what he called the consequences of reduced investment in higher education: fewer students sticking it out after their freshman year, fewer high school seniors choosing to attend college, and lost revenue if the state yanks funding for potentially lucrative faculty research projects.

Schrader and Nolan point out that even though they've allocated less than the governor recommended, their budget still contains significant increases for universities and community colleges, $65 million and $35 million above current spending levels, respectively.

But key lawmakers said the political will is there to do more, if possible.

"It was very clear from the beginning that the funding for community college and higher education was not acceptable," House Speaker Jeff Merkley, D-Portland, said of the co-chairs' budget.

The field hearing hosted by the Joint Ways and Means Committee will be held in the cafeteria of Cheldelin Middle School on Conifer Boulevard in Corvallis at 6:30 p.m.

According to OSU Director of Government Relations Jock Mills, a showing of citizen support for OSU and its programs led to improvement of the budget toward OSU in the 2005 legislative session.