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More budget cuts in education likely
 Media Credit: Michael Martin/Managing Editor Students gathered at the step of the State Capitol in St. Paul Wednesday to protest the rising tuition that state college and universities have been seeing. As much as $50 million could be cut from higher education later this week.
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Within days, university and college students across the state will know more about their fate in the near future.
A bill recommending that about $50 million be cut from higher education funding will go before the House in St. Paul either Tuesday or Wednesday. And if a recent vote at the House Higher Education Funding Committee is anything to go by, the bill will pass.
At that particular session of the committee Thursday, Rep. Lyndon Carlson (DFL-46B) proposed that the bill be amended so that no cuts be made toward higher education funding. The proposal was voted down six to four.
What made this more alarming where students are concerned was that it was a straight party line vote. There were six Republicans and four Democrats on the committee and that was how the vote went. It was not surprising, however, because it was a Republican initiative to begin with.
"The bill remains somewhat controversial," Carlson said, "because there are many of us (representatives) who feel that higher education funding should not be cut. It was a straight party line vote (at the committee hearing). All four Democrats (on the committee) supported not having cuts (in higher education)."
Carlson argued that while the state does have to find ways in which to work around a $2 billion deficit, cuts in higher education funding was not the way to go. He pointed out that the state and its various agencies spent about $865 million on consulting fees.
"A modest 5 percent cut in consulting fees would be enough to finance higher education," he said.
Rep. Joe Opatz (DFL-16A), who is also a member of the House Higher Education Funding Committee, supported Carlson's amendment Thursday. Opatz, who is also an administrator at SCSU, has been a friend to higher education in the past and continues to do so.
And Opatz is familiar with what Carlson has been fighting for.
"I actually carried that (cutting consulting expenditure) in the early 1990s," he said. "And it has almost doubled since I proposed some of the initial things back then."
With the amendment defeated at the Higher Education Funding Committee, the next step was the House Ways and Means Committee, which determines the overall state budget for the Minnesota House. In addition, all bills must go through the committee before being brought up in the House.
Efforts by the Democrats to fight the cuts at that level proved unsuccessful as well. So the bill now faces a vote in the House itself.
For any bill to pass, it has to garner 68 votes out of 134. With Republicans occupying 70 seats in the house, it appears that the bill will pass, as there is not much that those opposed to it can do.
"They (the Republicans) are the majority in the House," Carlson said. "So if we are to prevail, we have to get some of them over to our side."
But with the bill being a Republican initiative, both Carlson and Opatz admit that this would be hard to do.
"It (the bill) has gone through two committees," Carlson said, "so at this point, we haven't found anyone (in the Republican party) that supports us."
For the overall budget to be approved, both the House and the Senate have to agree to it. The House is higher education's last hope as the Senate had approved cuts earlier.
With the current bill to be debated at the House, the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system each face a $20 million cut. The bill in the Senate, however, would see more than those amounts cut from both systems.
"The reason I'm concerned about these cuts," Carlson said, "is that with the cuts, that means that tuition will increase even beyond what was estimated (a year ago). It's an affordability question. A lot of students are barely making it now and this would mean they would have to take fewer classes or be even more in debt."
Opatz was as equally disappointed with what is almost definitely about to take place.
"I've advocated for years now that higher education has gotten the short end of the stick," he said. "We are better off investing in higher education, although it is part of a deficit that we have to fix. I think there is a way in which we can cut the (state) budget and still protect higher education."
SCSU students are already facing a 13 percent increase in tuition for the next academic year. If the bill passes within the next few days, an even higher increase may be on the horizon.
Leslie Andres can be reached at: [email protected]
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