(Ron Knecht) – As the Regent who has led the fight against closing, breaking up or merging any of Nevada’s colleges or the Desert Research Institute (DRI), I write today to explain what the Regents have so far decided on this issue and to discuss recent legislative incursions in this matter.
When Gov. Brian Sandoval proposed his spending cuts in January, it was clear to me that budgeting by the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE) needed to consider cuts up to the level he proposed, while we work for a better outcome. I support his opposition to increased taxes, but I also advocate that his proposed NSHE cuts be mitigated by at long last making K-12 and Health and Human Services carry some of their share of the budget gap, because spending by these two largest sectors has by far grown the fastest in the last decade.
At our February meeting, another Regent and I led the move, as a precautionary measure, to instruct our institutions to present plans for cuts up to the levels the Governor proposed. Considering the depth of these cuts, the Board also directed the Chancellor to bring forward options that might involve closing, breaking up or merging institutions. Repugnant as that idea is, it would have been imprudent under the circumstances to dismiss those options without a look.
After preliminary and somewhat incomplete budget reduction plans were presented in early March, it was clear that even the Governor’s proposed cuts could be better accommodated by reductions at each institution than by cannibalizing any of them. So, at our March meeting, I moved to take off the table all closure, break-up or merger options. Some other Regents expressly agreed that, having reviewed the preliminary plans, they were reassured that the destructive options were not necessary and would be worse than institutional cuts, and the motion passed by an 8-5 vote.
Besides recognizing that there is no need for the destructive options because institutional cuts would be less destructive to NSHE’s instructional, research and public service missions, we also considered the turmoil, panic and loss of productivity that keeping these options on the table was causing among students, faculty and staff. We wanted to minimize the great human cost and productivity losses in the process.
This week, a legislative committee directed NSHE staff to bring to it complete detail on all options, including the cannibalistic ones, before the Regents meet in April. In the wake of this incursion, two concerns that had previously circulated were amplified.
First, some folks are concerned that the tax-and-spend partisans may want to keep in play the destructive options to pressure the Governor and Republican legislators to support increased taxes. Second, some folks also suspect that our two universities are promoting these options in order to hold themselves harmless against any cuts, even though the budget processes as a whole already favor the universities over the rest of the system.
I could not, in good conscience and in view of information I have received, tell anyone to discount these concerns. However, I hope that legislators are motivated only by wanting to reassure themselves by reviewing the details that the Board’s decisions are sound. Also, by considering the damage the proposed cuts will do to higher education, they may see the logic of finally making the two state budget sectors that have grown like topsy finally bear some of their share of the cuts.
In any event, the adopted position of the Regents remains that voted in March: Closing, breaking up or merging any of our colleges or DRI is, for very good reasons, not being considered. Faculty, staff, students and other people concerned that our colleges and DRI are being used as pawns in political games or unreasonably threatened to be sacrificed for our most favored institutions should contact their Regents and legislators to complain.
(Economist Ron Knecht, of Carson City, chairs the Regents’ Business and Finance Committee.)