After months of discussion and millions of dollars in cuts to higher education’s budget, lawmakers finalized state appropriations Wednesday.
Many lawmakers held on to hope that the cooling economy had heated up in 2002. However, when Gov. Mike Leavitt announced the tax revenue shortfall had slid past $200 million to $256 million on Feb. 15, legislators once again slashed the budgets of all state agencies.
U lobbyist Nancy Lyon said, “We recognized coming into this year that there would be cuts. Given the challenges that faced lawmakers in making decisions, we don’t feel we were punished or required to take more of a cut than our fair share.”
The majority of the good news concerns the U health sciences.
Just before the legislative session began, the U School of Medicine officials held a press conference announcing their plans to petition the state government for $15 million to keep the school’s program at its current level of quality.
“People might call me crazy because I’m asking for such a large increase in funding in a year of budget cuts, but the Legislature has tremendous ways of coming up with needed money, even in years of trouble,” said Lorris Betz, senior vice president for health sciences, during the press conference in January.
In this year’s budget, lawmakers allotted $4.2 million for the medical school by creating an additional tax on cigarettes. Federal funding will match the state’s dollars three to one, creating nearly $15 million for the medical school.
“It is great to see the money come through. It is so desperately needed,” said Kim Wirthlin, assistant vice president for health sciences.
In addition to the funding for the medical school, the state also created $33 million in funding through bonds to build a health sciences classroom building.
But the medical school will still need to meet with lawmakers during the interim to respond to the audit report of the school’s admission practices.
“We look forward to being able to clear up some questions raised in the audit report,” Wirthlin said.
The state allotted $66 million for the U education fund. The state also created funding through bonds for a new engineering building and authorized to remodel Marriott Library.
Higher education received only $9.7 million of the needed $26 million to fully fund the 8 percent increase in student enrollment at the state’s institutions this year.
“It would have been nice to see more funding too for enrollment growth,” Lyon said.
What this means for students is not yet known. U President Bernie Machen previously said to compensate for the lack of state funds, he plans on increasing tuition “significantly.” Machen plans to announce his proposed increase later this week. That proposal will need to receive the approval of the U Board of Trustees and the state Board of Regents before it can be implemented.