On this week’s Radio PA Roundtable, the new law dealing with epi-pens in schools is now in effect; PITT has landed on a national Top 100 list; and Governor Tom Corbett leaves office on Tuesday. What will he be doing on Wednesday?
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On this week’s Radio PA Roundtable, a recap of the official start of the new legislative session in Harrisburg, as lawmakers were sworn in on Tuesday. And researchers at the University of Pittsburgh are conducting studies on what could be the future of shale gas drilling.
Radio PA Roundtable is a 30-minute program featuring in-depth reporting, commentary and analysis on the top news stories of the week.
Click the audio player below to hear the full broadcast:
Former Auditor General Jack Wagner’s special report on Penn State’s governance will be the subject of a state Senate committee hearing later this month. “It will be a look at whether there should be changes, and then whether the legislature should have a role in that,” says State Government Committee Chairman Lloyd Smucker (R-Lancaster), who adds that the talks will eventually be broadened to include the other three state related universities as well.
Smucker, who is also a member of the Appropriations Committee, got the ball rolling with a few questions for the universities’ leaders this week.
Penn State President Rodney Erickson says their committee on governance & long-range planning will offer some suggested changes to the Board of Trustees later this month. “Much has already changed with the structure and operations of the board, and there’s surely more to come.”
None of the leaders of PSU, Lincoln and the University of Pittsburgh expressed concern over one possible reform, which would remove the president’s voting powers on their respective boards. Temple’s president did not offer an opinion because he’s only been on the job two months, and hasn’t even attended his first trustees’ meeting.
University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Mark Nordenberg did weigh in on another big recommendation in Jack Wagner’s Penn State report – reducing the size of the board. “I don’t know how a small board could exercise proper oversight over an institution the size of Penn State or Pitt or Temple, unless they were going to be full-time board members,” says Nordenberg, noting that smaller is not always better.
Penn State’s Board of Trustees has 32-members. Pitt’s board has 36-voting members; Temple’s has 36-voting members; and Lincoln’s has 39. For reference, Ohio State’s board has 19-members (2-non-voting). The University of Michigan has 9-board members (1-non-voting).
With Governor Tom Corbett’s commitment to level-fund higher education in the new fiscal year, state-owned and state-related university officials are pledging to keep any tuition hikes as low as possible. “This agreement, this working together, will allow our schools to better plan their budgets for the coming year and make the best use of their resources,” Corbett said at a capitol news conference. “Their commitment should allow students, and particularly their families, to plan their own budgets accordingly.” Corbett was flanked by the state’s higher education leaders as he made Friday’s announcement.
This agreement – level-funding in exchange for minimal tuition hikes – is similar to a deal that was ultimately struck last year. Corbett says it resulted in the lowest tuition increases in more than a decade. “For example, Temple University did not raise tuition last year; Penn State had their lowest tuition increase in nearly 40-years.”
The state appropriated nearly $1.6-billion to higher education in the current fiscal year, and Corbett is proposing the same amount for FY2013-14.
State Senator Jake Corman (R-Centre) says level-funding is significant in what continue to be difficult budget times. “As Appropriations Chairman I can tell you that this coming fiscal year… our cost-carry-forward items – such as Medicaid, debt service, corrections, things of that nature – will grow at a higher rate than what our revenues will grow next year,” he explains.
This sort of early collaboration between Governor Corbett and the higher education community is a change of pace from previous budget cycles. Two years ago, higher education received a near 20% cut, after even steeper cuts were initially proposed. Last year, a level-funding deal wasn’t struck until long after Corbett proposed another round of stiff cuts.
With that track record in mind, Democrats don’t seem too impressed with Friday’s announcement. “By flat funding higher education, Tom Corbett is keeping in place harsh cuts from past budgets and ignoring cost of living increases,” says Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chairman Jim Burn, “Tom Corbett has the wrong priorities.”
Corbett will discuss all of his priorities on Tuesday when he delivers his annual budget address to a joint session of the General Assembly.
State-related universities saw near 20% cuts in state support last year. The governor imposed a 5% budget “freeze” mid-year, and Penn State, Pitt and Temple face proposed 30% cuts next fiscal year. “In certain respects, what we’re seeing is the dismantling of a long, long commitment by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to public higher education,” University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Mark Nordenberg told the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday. Nordenberg went on to say the cumulative cuts appear to be pushing the state-related into private institutions.
When asked what the proposed cuts would mean, if they were entirely addressed through tuition hikes, Penn State President Rodney Erickson told the panel that it would be a 9.37% tuition increase. “But I can assure you that we will not do that,” he added.
At Temple, President Ann Weaver Hart says the hypothetical tuition hike would be in the $4,000 dollar range. At Pitt, Chancellor Nordenberg said in-state students would be paying $3,000 dollars more if the cuts were absorbed entirely through tuition increases. But the leaders of all three universities stressed that they continue to look to cut costs, and they would keep tuition hikes as low as possible.
“The unemployment rate among college graduates is less than half the unemployment rate among high school graduates,” Temple President Ann Weaver Hart said as she implored state lawmakers to reconsider another round of deep budget cuts.
Pennsylvania’s fourth state-related university, Lincoln, receives just a fraction of the state support as the larger universities do. Lincoln’s “general support” line item would be level-funded at $11.1-million dollars in the governor’s spending plan.
Outnumbered in both the House and Senate, Democrats in Harrisburg have just one bullet in their gun, and on Monday they pulled the trigger.
In both the House and Senate, Democrats blocked passage of several non-preferred spending bills associated with the state-related universities, which include Penn State, Pitt, Temple, Lincoln and the University of Pennsylvania. The schools would have to endure 18-19% cuts to their state funding under the bills, but the negative votes by Democrats could put 100% of the funding at risk.
The move was possible because non-preferred appropriations bills require passage by a 2-thirds majority vote in both the House and Senate.
Republicans characterized the move as a dangerous game of chicken, and say the negative votes could stall the funding until at least this fall or beyond. Democrats say they rejected the funding to hold out for further restoration of cuts to the schools. The latest proposals had restored hundreds of millions of dollars from Governor Tom Corbett’s original plan to trim the universities’ funding by more than 50%.
Democrats want to tap into this year’s estimated $600-700 million in additional revenue collections to restore the cuts. Failure to pass funding for the state-supported universities would not stand in the way of passage of the overall General Fund budget plan, which is expected to get its first vote on the Senate floor as early as today.