March 3, 2005
Hard work still ahead in Legislature, Hodgins says
The state Legislature may have completed half of its session according to the calendar, but the bulk of the hard work remains to be accomplished, says UW Director of State Relations Randy Hodgins.
Gov. Gregoire is expected to release her proposed budget in about three weeks. This week is the cutoff by which bills dealing with policy must move out of their originating committee. The fiscal committees’ deadline is next Monday.
Bills to amend Initiative 200, which would permit colleges or universities to consider race in the admissions process, have not yet been voted out of their originating committees. The Senate appears unlikely to approve a bill without a referendum clause; the House has been unable to find bipartisan support for its bill. As a result, efforts to amend the initiative are uncertain, Hodgins says.
The governor’s proposal to create a Life Sciences Discovery Fund with revenues realized from the tobacco case settlement, scheduled to flow into state coffers beginning in 2008, has passed out of the Senate Labor Commerce, Research and Economic Development Committee and the House Technology, Energy and Communications Committee and will now be heard in the fiscal committees of each house. It is possible that final action on this issue may await resolution of some state budget issues later in the session.
Prospects of significant changes in the State Ethics Act, affecting technology transfer, appear very good, with floor action possible in both houses in the near future.
Bills to permit some of the branch campuses to expand access for lower-division students are moving in both houses. The House bill would allow both UW Tacoma and UW Bothell to become four-year institutions. It also would create a pilot program in select community colleges to offer four-year “applied bachelor” degrees. The Senate version does not yet allow UW Bothell to directly admit freshmen and sophomores students and also does not include the proposal for the pilot community college degrees. The process of amendment and conference will resolve these issues, Hodgins says, although probably not until near the end of the session.
Bills requesting that the UW and WSU assess the feasibility of creating a Washington Academy of Sciences, to add scholarly input on important state policy decisions, are likely to pass both houses.
Legislation requiring that public buildings be built using high-performance “green” building standards is alive in both houses. The UW has testified that, although it supports the intent of such legislation, it has reservations about the formal certification process specified in the bills, which is both time-consuming and expensive.
A bill requiring performance audits of state agencies is likely to pass this session, so the efforts of the higher education community are focused around making sure the legislation specifies that accreditation studies and reports prepared for the Higher Education Coordinating Board be considered in meeting these new performance audit requirements. Most legislators, and the State Auditor, seem agreeable to this provision, Hodgins says.
The last two weeks have seen growing enthusiasm for an idea that legislators are describing as “sliding scale tuition.” Although the concept has not yet been crafted into a bill, the broad outlines of the proposal have emerged: Tuition would be set at the cost of instruction, with discounts for state residents and also for families with financial need.
“Many legislators are interested in a progressive pricing system based on income,” Hodgins says, “but at the same time they are concerned about further squeezing the middle class.” Because there is no personal financial information available from the families of more than half the students, the effects of this sweeping policy change cannot be predicted without further investigation. Several institutions are intrigued by the idea. Others, are opposed, feeling this change would diminish the state’s responsibility to fund public higher education.
A subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee is considering a proposal that would request one research university and one regional institution to study this issue and report back to the legislature next year.
