Skip to content

Shin Endorses Everett Site for New Snohomish Campus

Sen. Paull Shin (D-Edmonds) the chair of the Senate Higher Education Committee today endorsed the Pacific Station site in Everett as his preferred location for a new UW North Sound branch campus.

In a news release sent out earlier this afternoon, Shin cited the recently completed NBBJ site selection study report which gave the highest ranking to the Pacific Station site in Everett as the best location for the new campus.  Shin further stated that he felt the Pacific Station site offered the best potential to meet the needs of Washington students.

A public hearing on the Senate bill to create a UW North Sound campus in Everett will be held Thursday January 17 at 10:00 a.m. in Senate Hearing Room 3 in the John A. Cherberg Building.

Gov Has Tough Love Words for Snohomish Campus Supporters

Obviously, one of the major higher education issues during the 2008 legislative session will be whether or not to officially create a new UW branch campus in Snohomish County and just where that campus might be located.

Things have been pretty quiet on the UW North Sound front since the Governor’s budget was released in mid-December.  As we reported at the time, the Governor’s budget includes $1.1 million in operating funding to begin offering classes next fall in temporary space, but did not express an opinion on where the campus should be located.

Yesterday, the Governor met with the editorial board of the Everett Herald and her message to the community was simple:  agree on a site for the new campus or risk losing the issue for this year.  Legislators who support both the Everett and Marysville sites are expected to introduce bills when the session begins next week that would designate their respective communities as the site for the new college.  The Governor’s advice to all concerned is to come to an agreement as soon as possible.

UW Legislative Briefing This Friday

With the beginning of the 2008 legislative session just one week from today, the first State Relations Legislative Update Briefing will be held this Friday, January 11 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. in Gerberding 142.  Topics to be covered include a session preview as well as a summary of the University’s 2008 budget and policy agenda.  Hope to see you there!

Fromhold to Retire After Current Term

Happy New Year UW state relations blog readers!  Hope all of you had a restful and enjoyable holiday.

Here’s a story from this morning’s Vancouver Columbian in which Rep. Bill Fromhold (D-Vancouver) announces he will not seek re-election to his 49th district seat next fall.  He plans to become the executive director of the Mentoring Advanced Placement (MAP) program, based in Vancouver.  His wife, Marcia Fromhold, will serve as MAP assistant director.

Fromhold, 65, has an extensive background in education, with 22 years at the Educational Service District 112 in Vancouver, the last 14 of which as the superintendent.  He has also served as president and CEO of the Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce.  He was originally elected to the state legislature in 2000 and currently serves as chair of the House Capital Budget Committee.

Upon Further Review…..

I’ve now had a chance to examine the Governor’s 2008 supplemental budget in a bit more detail, helped along quite a bit by a detailed breakdown of her spending plan prepared by the staff of the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

This analysis looks not only at state general fund spending, but what budget analysts in Olympia refer to as “near general fund” expenditures, which includes spending from other funds and accounts that get their revenue from broad based tax sources.  Over the past several years, the near general fund has been the generally accepted way of tracking overall state operating budget spending.

The Ways and Means analysis concludes that the Governor’s 2008 supplemental budget spends a “net” amount of $234 million from the near general fund, $144 million of which comes just from the state general fund itself.  The term “net” is important because the $234 million figure is a combination of both budget enhancements as well as budget reductions or savings.  For example, $31 million is added to the budget as a maintenance level adjustment for the increased costs of the I-732 COLA, while $106 million is subtracted from the budget for the PEBB rate reduction we discussed in an earlier posting the day the Governor’s budget was released.

The other thing that jumps out at you when you study this budget summary is how many of the policy adjustments in the supplemental budget are dedicated to health care, human services and corrections, and conversely, how little is spent on K-12 and higher education.  Now, to be totally fair, the underlying two-year budget for education is extremely beneficial for all education sectors and nothing in the Governor’s supplemental budget proposal takes away from that reality.  However, some education advocates have already expressed disappointment with the 2008 spending proposal because of the dearth of new K-12 investments in particular, and the higher level of spending in other areas of the budget are likely to fuel those criticisms further.

Some Thoughts on the State Capital Budget

We have talked about the challenges the University faces when it comes to dealing with a multi-million backlog of capital facilities projects and the difficulties faced by legislators in putting all the pieces together in the state capital budget.  The piece below is part of a regular communication which UW Foundation leaders Orin Smith, Dan Evans and Bill Gates Sr. send to members of the University’s community.  It is a pretty accurate summary of the current state of affairs in UW capital financing, at least from the state perspective.

For many years, Johnson Hall (home of earth and space sciences) was Exhibit A in the UW’s catalogue of worn-out buildings.  It was old, it was big, it was prominent, it was unsafe, it was dysfunctional, and it was depressing.  But as you know if you came to the Foundation Board meeting this past September, Johnson Hall has been reborn.  It looks terrific, and it now provides safe and first-class spaces for teaching and research.  For this wonderful renovation we have state capital funding to thank.

In romantic moments, we like to hark back to the image of Socrates on one end of a log, a student on the other, as the essence of learning.  That image reflects an enduring truth:  great teachers are the heart and soul of education.  But Socrates lived in a different climate, and he did not teach molecular engineering (for example), and he did not have forty thousand students to worry about.  Here and now, the UW requires a body—a campus—as well as heart and soul.  And that campus, as a physical plant, has been built and maintained primarily by years of state capital appropriations.

The trouble is, both state and higher-education officials have come to realize that the state’s capital budget now faces structural problems that raise serious doubts about its capacity to meet the future needs of Washington’s colleges and universities.

A short primer on budget policy is necessary here.  The state’s capital budget is largely financed by bonds.  By constitutional limit, the annual debt service on those bonds cannot exceed 9 percent of general state revenues, calculated as a running three-year average.  That is what puts the ceiling on capital spending.  And the state has now pretty much reached that constitutional ceiling, while demands on the capital budget are growing exponentially.  (Specifics:  When the 2007 legislature convened, the bonding capacity available for new capital projects was capped at $2.1 billion.) 

Randy Hodgins, who became the UW’s director of state relations after many years in Olympia, watched the problems develop.  “When I started out, 20 years ago,” he says, “higher education accounted for about half the state capital budget.  After all, campuses represent about two-thirds of the state’s capital assets.  But in the early 1990s things began to change.  When Initiative 601 put a limit on state operating expenditures, a lot of ‘local community projects’ moved over to the capital budget, which was not covered by I 601.  There were growing environmental pressures to buy lands for preservation.  The state has become a pretty significant player in low-income housing, which used to be built by the feds and local agencies.  Prisons expanded.  And the biggest change is that the state is now picking up a significant share of K-12 construction, since state timber funds have dried up.  So the ‘state’ part of the state capital budget is beginning to take a back seat to local projects.”  The budget has grown, but the claims on it have grown more.  As of the 2005-07 biennium, higher education’s share was a little over 25 percent.

Meanwhile, the capital demands on higher education have also grown.  Since 1990, the system has added seven community and technical colleges and five branch campuses (with another waiting in the wings).  Enrollments have risen dramatically. 

Not surprisingly, building maintenance and renewal have not fared well in this climate.  There are various formulas one can apply for calculating how much we ought to spend every year to keep the campus in good shape and modernize it for evolving uses.  By any of these measures, state funding has fallen far short.  Hence the plight of Johnson Hall and 14 other aging UW buildings that were judged, by a study concluded in June 2004, to be in critical decline.  

The good news is that we are now about halfway through the renovation of those buildings, which collectively became a phased project called Restore the Core.  The state stepped up to the plate, and we are so far on time and on budget.  Four buildings are done, four are now in construction, three more (including the iconic Denny Hall) are on deck for the next biennium, and the rest are due to follow in turn.  You can imagine the excitement of faculty and students who move back into these sparkling “new” facilities.

It is also true that the 2007 legislative session gave us our best capital budget since the late 1990s:  $143.6 million, including $94 million for Restore the Core.  “The state,” says Randy Hodgins, “is still a huge, huge part of our capital building support.”

But both he and Marilyn Cox, who heads up our capital planning office, look at the debt ceiling and the state’s multiplying capital demands and see trouble ahead for higher education.  Even the UW’s 2007-09 appropriation, says Marilyn, welcome as it is, remains “far below the level required for good and prudent facility management, plus growth.”  Over the next half-dozen years or so, the UW is looking to finish Restore the Core, construct a new molecular engineering building, continue development of the Bothell and Tacoma campuses (and the likely new one in Snohomish County), and expand Gould Hall to meet needs of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning.  Where will the dollars come from?

“We’ve got to come up with creative new ideas,” says Marilyn—“we” being the state and higher education working together.  Fortunately, there are legislators who are just as worried about this problem as Randy, Marilyn, and higher-education leaders across the state.  Among ideas on the table:  using state matching funds to attract private dollars; tapping state and local economic-development funds to help build out the new campuses; giving campuses more flexibility to raise and use local funds, such as the building-fee portion of tuition.  “This is one of those long-term problem-solving efforts,” says Marilyn.  

One immediate measure would be renewal of the Gardner-Evans Act (yes, that Evans), which expires at the end of this biennium.  In 2003, that act authorized issuance of state bonds, over three biennia, to provide dedicated funds for enlarging capacity and major preservation on campuses.  In the current biennium, more than a third of the UW’s capital funding comes from Gardner-Evans.  Higher-ed institutions are advocating renewal of the act, now called Gardner-Evans-Locke, for another three biennia.

And of course the UW has turned to non-state funding sources for some recent buildings.  The Foege Building (genome sciences and bioengineering) was built almost exclusively by gifts, and the Ben Hall Building (multi-disciplinary research) relies on bonds financed by federal indirect-cost recovery.

But these are special cases.  The larger quandary remains:  Under current arrangements, the state cannot provide adequate capital funds for higher education to do its job.  So we need to figure out some new arrangements.  There is a huge statewide backlog of campus preservation to attend to, and there are new facilities to build to accommodate growing demand for education and research.  “Not solving this problem,” says Marilyn, “is just not acceptable.  We can’t and won’t give up.”

Governor’s 2008 Supplemental Budget Released

Governor Gregoire released her 2008 supplemental budget proposal this morning in Olympia.  The $144 million general fund spending proposal includes a “net” total of $99 million in what she terms “required spending items” such as caseloads, litigation, federal requirements, a one-time $105 million savings in health care benefit costs (see below) and other unavoidable costs.

The supplemental budget also calls for $45 million in “targeted investments” which are primarily one time items for disaster response and recovery, education and campus safety, health care and patient safety and community safety.  The major “winner” in the Governor’s spending plan is the state’s savings accounts, with $430 million going into the newly enacted budget stabilization account (Rainy Day Fund) and $774 million in unrestricted reserves.

The Governor’s budget includes a total of $8 million for the University of Washington for the following capital and operating budget items:

  • $4.795 million one-time capital and operating funding for campus safety (discussed previously in the blog)
  • $2.000 million one-time capital funding for UW Tacoma land acquisition
  • $1.109 million on-going operating funding for UW North Sound campus start-up
  • $125,000 one-time funding for the Ruckelshaus Center to work property and land rights issues
  • $49,000 on-going operating funding for a technical pension adjustment

All state agencies (including the UW by $14.8 million) had their budgets reduced through a technical adjustment for employee health care benefit costs in the second year of the biennium.  The surplus in the public employee benefits account is large enough that the Governor is proposing to use it to “temporarily” reduce the state cost of providing health care benefits in fiscal year 2008-09 by a one-time total of $105 million, about half of which comes from higher education agencies.  The reduction has no effect on the benefits that will be provided to state employees.

The Governor’s proposal is truly one of the smallest supplemental budget recommendations I can remember in many, many years.  She made it clear throughout the fall that she was going to keep this budget rather lean and only fund those items that in her judgment, could not wait until the 2009 session.  In that regard, her proposal exceeds even my expectations for de minimus spending.

Obviously, a number of important items which were included in the UW’s request were not funded or funded only partially in the Governor’s supplemental budget.  Our goal will be to convince the legislature to include a number of them in their own spending proposals which they will begin preparing with they convene in Olympia on January 14.

For more detailed information on the Governor’s budget, visit the Office of Financial Management website.

New York Higher Education Commission to Release Report

In his successful campaign for Governor last year, Eliot Spitzer asked why New York did not have a “Berkeley of the East” and said he wanted New York’s public colleges to be among the finest in the nation.  Spitzer’s remark lead to the creation of a 30-member State Commission on Higher Education which releases its findings this morning.  The New York Times obtained an advance copy of the report and reported its major findings in yesterday’s Sunday edition.

The report calls for significantly higher financial support for New York public universities and allowing the universities to set their own tuition without state approval and to vary tuition rates by campus.  The report also urges hiring 2,000 additional faculty members and creating a $3 billion innovation fund for research grants in fields that can fuel economic development.

The reference to UC Berkeley is an acknowledgement that New York has historically under-invested in its State University of New York (SUNY) system created during Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s tenure.  While the system has grown substantially, only 55 percent of New York college students are in public institutions compared with 79 percent nationally.  Higher education in New York receives less than 7 percent of the state budget compared with a national average of 11 percent.  According to the Times story, John Simpson, the president of SUNY-Buffalo states that “There is a history of chafing between the public universities and the privates in New York State, and the publics have historically not won.”

While SUNY-Buffalo and SUNY-Stony Brook are both belong to the Association of American Universities, the nation’s major research schools, they are not the same caliber at UC Berkeley which is regularly ranked as one of the country’s top three public research institutions.  For a state with a spotty track record on major investments in public higher education, Governor Spitzer and the New York public universities will have their work cut out for them when the state legislature convenes next year.

Helen Sommers Re-Election Watch Begins

Public radio reporter Austin Jenkins wrote this story for Crosscut.com yesterday about what has been a hot topic in the Olympia rumor mill for a number of weeks — will Rep. Helen Sommers (D-Seattle) run for re-election in 2008?

Sommers, who is 75 is the chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee and a longtime friend of higher education and the University of Washington.  She has served continuously in the House of Representatives since 1973.  In 2004, she battled back a tough primary election challenge from an SEIU-backed Democratic opponent and was then easily re-elected in 2006.

Speculation on her political future began in earnest this fall as several lobbyists reported that Sommers was returning campaign contributions.  For her part, Sommers indicates she remains undecided about another term and won’t make her decision until after the legislative session.