Lawmakers, See What People Want

Suppose a neighbor dropped by and asked your support for a new charity. Roughly 60 percent of the money would cover the education of local young people. The rest would run area law enforcement, help the poor and elderly, and more. Care to make a contribution?

Trick question. You already do contribute, of course. By paying state taxes. Yet most of us hate paying taxes. At the same time, we firmly support most of the services our taxes create. This creates dilemmas. Weak tax support is driving some of the state’s most popular institutions - universities - to work harder at private fund raising. Private givers, however, expect their gifts to produce a direct enhancement, beyond cushioning the blow of state-ordered budget cuts.

There’s a political disconnect between public support levels and the legislature’s budget priorities.

Consider, for example, the admirable deluge of public and business donations to Washington State University’s current fund-raising campaign. This fall, giving shot past the $200 million goal, eight months ahead of schedule. Encouraged, and mindful of the growing need, WSU raised the goal to $250 million and extended the drive by another year, to June 1997. Results so far include 49 distinguished professorships, upgrades for instructional computers and a doubling of the university’s scholarship endowment.

While the average university gets donations from 18 percent of alums, WSU gets support from 29 percent. This is a statement of confidence in what public universities do and in how WSU, generally speaking, does the job. It’s a public sentiment worth remembering as the governor and Legislature decide, in days to come, how to allocate state tax dollars. After all, taxes cover the lion’s share of university costs. The same people who support universities enough to donate money for enhancements also are counting on the use of their taxes to cover basic operations.

That expectation might not be met. The number of eligible university students is soaring, as baby boomers’ kids graduate from high school. Washington’s universities don’t have nearly enough capacity to serve them.

The solution should be a partnership, not a stalemate, between private and public funding.

What would voters do, given their support for education, if their kids are turned away from college because the Legislature had other priorities, like cutting taxes or building prisons?

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board