April 05, 2009 05:38 PM UTC

The Kids Are Not Alright

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Grand Junction Sentinel reports:

A move by the Joint Budget Committee to cut $300 million from spending for higher education marks “one of the most important policy shifts this state has seen in a very, very long time,” Associated Student Government President Adam Davenport said Thursday as about 70 Mesa State students gathered in Houston Hall. “It will alter the higher-education landscape for decades to come.”

Mesa State officials said they would have to consider tuition increases to make up for the rounds of cuts, if the budget committee’s proposal to reduce spending on colleges and universities by $300 million, or half of what had been budgeted, is approved by the Legislature.

Houston Hall was built by the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression, “when government invested” in its people, Davenport said.

Davenport and several other Mesa State students plan to rally Monday at the state Capitol as the Senate takes up the budget proposal.

And the Pueblo Chieftain reports:

Colorado State University-Pueblo student leaders will help spearhead a rally Monday at the state Capitol to protest the Joint Budget Committee’s decision to make deeper cuts in the higher education budget.

In December, the JBC agreed to Gov. Bill Ritter’s recommendation to slice a combined $52 million from the state’s 2008-09 and 2009-10 higher education funding.

In March, the JBC approved another $50 million in cuts to higher education followed by the decision this week to cut a whopping $350 million, for a total of $452 million from the 2009-10 budget.

“We will see complete devastation at CSU-Pueblo if these budget cuts pass,” Steve Titus, chief of staff for the Associated Students’ Government at CSU-Pueblo, said Friday.

And the Fort Collins Coloradoan reports:

CSU officials had been bracing for cuts that were already likely to force furloughs and have forced layoffs at Larimer County’s largest employer. The new cuts, if implemented, would be far deeper than expected.

“There’s almost no way to react to it,” said CSU system CFO Rich Schwiegert. “It’s a lot worse than I expected. I’m a little amazed that anybody would vote for cuts this deep in higher ed.”

He added: “(This) will be a very, very long conversation within our organization on to how to deal with that.”

The funding cut is not set in stone. It is still a recommendation made by the Joint Budget Committee and must be formally debated by lawmakers before heading to Gov. Bill Ritter for his review. That process is expected to take several more weeks.

The JBC backs a bill to take $500 million from workers-compensation insurer Pinnacol’s reserves and leave it with $198 million, or $85 million more than regulators require. That money would be funneled to higher education…

Schwiegert said he expects students and administrators from the Fort Collins campus to visit with lawmakers next week to press their case for alternatives. [Pols emphasis]

Once can expect that those won’t all be the most, you know, cordial visits. Returning to the Grand Junction Sentinel, we see the real problem at the heart of the Joint Budget Committee’s brinksmanship with higher education in the balance–can they even pull it off?

Raiding the reserves of one of Colorado’s largest suppliers of workers’ compensation insurance might be a novel approach, but it has yet to win his support, Gov. Bill Ritter said Saturday.

Legislators have suggested that the state use $500 million of the $700 million in reserves of Pinnacol Assurance to help balance the state budget and offset cutbacks by colleges and universities.

“I appreciate the fact that the Legislature is trying to be very creative,” Ritter said in an exclusive phone interview with The Daily Sentinel.

“I have not said I support going to Pinnacol, but at the same time I am looking for any way I can to avoid making cuts to higher education,” Ritter said, noting he “has put more new money into higher education than any governor in the history of this state.”

The Legislature’s Joint Budget Committee last week slashed more than $300 million from higher-education spending, cutting the amount it previously had allocated for colleges and universities by 35 percent.

To make up for the cuts, the committee proposed using $102 million in federal stimulus funds and $300 million from Pinnacol’s reserves.

The committee also proposed using $200 million from those reserves to shore up the state general fund.

Whether Pinnacol even has those reserves remains to be confirmed, Ritter said. It’s also not clear that the state can take the reserves, he said.

We get that the JBC strongly believes they can take these reserves, and that may well be the case in the end–but they have yet to make that argument convincingly, and as you can see they haven’t even convinced the Governor. The whole gamble at work here will rest on the ability of proponents to sell the public on the plan to “backfill” these massive cuts with Pinnacol money. That’s not an easy job, full of dense legalese and ‘inside baseball’ explanations that make the public’s eyes glaze over within seconds–but they’d better get on it, and right now.

Because 30% tuition hikes and community colleges shutting down have a way of getting the voter’s undivided attention, but like Gray Davis can tell you, it’s not the kind of attention you want.