Oregon higher education officials breathed a sigh of relief Wednesday after Gov. John Kitzhaber announced a new plan to re-balance the state’s 2001-03 budget.
As part of his proposed plan, Kitzhaber recommended a $44.5 million cut to the Oregon University System’s operating budget. The 5.5 percent OUS reduction is less than what Kitzhaber asked the State Board of Higher Education to consider in October.
Tim Young, a student representative with the board, said Kitzhaber had asked the board to consider budget cuts as high as 10 percent. Young, a University political science major, expressed relief at the news of the governor’s proposal.
“My gut reaction is that it is a dramatic improvement,” Young said. “There’s only so far you can stretch a rubber band before it breaks. This is still tough for everybody, but at least now the sky’s not falling.”
On January 7, Kitzhaber announced a potential re-balance plan — based only on program cuts — that would have reduced the OUS budget by $84 million. Kitzhaber was constitutionally required to make the proposal but repeatedly said that he did not consider it fiscally responsible or politically possible.
But according to John Wykoff, legislative director for the Oregon Student Association, some officials feared the proposal just the same. The OSA expected to see 6,000 state opportunity grants eliminated. Under the new plan, only 1,300 grants would be eliminated, he said.
OUS spokesman Bob Bruce agreed that the new proposal hurts OUS less, but it is too early to tell how the proposed cuts will affect individual universities.
Others are not so optimistic. State Rep. Vicki Walker, D-Eugene, noted that OUS “took a pretty big cut.”
“I don’t know how we are going to meet these cuts” while trying to accommodate higher levels of enrollment, she said.
University of Oregon Provost John Moseley said the new proposal still fails to address increased enrollment projections facing state universities. There could be 1,000 new students at the University next fall with no state funding to offset costs, he said.
But Moseley would not predict how the final budget would pan out.
“This is just one more proposal in a series of proposals,” he said. “But we do appreciate the fact that higher education’s situation has improved at each stage. I hope that (the governor and the legislature) will be able to continue to improve the situation.”