Conservative Budgets Set For Colleges Nic Likely To Get 5.6 Percent Increase

Though every college in Idaho has pleaded for more money for scholarships, legislators skipped over the request Wednesday when they set budgets for universities and community colleges Wednesday.

“I didn’t give it any thought myself,” said Sen. Clyde Boatright, R-Rathdrum, who serves on the Legislature’s budget committee. “We do a wonderful job here with scholarships, both public and private funds.”

If the need were pressing, Boatright said, “Somebody would’ve brought it up.”

Said Rep. Don Pischner, R-Coeur d’Alene, who also serves on the budget committee, “I just think that the committee is so hamstrung for the lack of available general funds that you really have to have a strong case built.”

The committee set conservative budgets for community colleges and for universities Wednesday. The budgets still need approval from both houses of the Legislature and the governor’s signature before they become law, but budget bills are rarely changed after the powerful joint committee acts.

The state’s two community colleges - including North Idaho College - would get a 5.6 percent increase in the coming year, exactly what Gov. Dirk Kempthorne recommended.

“In my time on the committee, we’ve been very good to community colleges,” Pischner said. “We weren’t maybe as good this year, but compared to other agencies, we were.”

The budget it set for the state’s four-year colleges and universities would give them just slightly more than the governor’s recommended 3 percent increase, because it includes $500,000 to fund the universities’ end of the state’s early-reading initiative.

That funding would be required by a separate bill now moving through the Legislature, and it matches a priority Kempthorne has identified. At the universities, the money would go to beef up programs that teach prospective teachers how to teach young children to read.

The only other new thing in the university budget is the governor’s $1.5 million matching grant program designed to help universities attract and retain faculty in highly competitive areas. Sen. Robert Lee, R-Rexburg, won a bid to divert $200,000 of that to Idaho State University to help bring them toward equity in funding with the state’s other universities.

“I’d rather have a million there than $200,000,” Lee said.

Pischner and Sen. Marguerite McLaughlin, D-Orofino, voted against the budget plan that included Lee’s move. Boatright voted yes.

“I would’ve rather seen that money go to North Idaho College for property tax relief,” Pischner said, but he acknowledged such a switch between budgets would have been unlikely.

Idaho’s two community colleges collect local property taxes to pay for part of their operations, but the rest of the state’s higher education institutions are fully state-funded. Pischner has long complained that that is unfair - and that perhaps residents of the universities’ communities should pay, too.

Boatright said he thought Lee’s proposal made sense. “I’ll support ISU as well as NIC,” he said.

Marty Peterson, University of Idaho spokesman, said of the ISU money: “I think when you consider the makeup of the committee, it wasn’t surprising that they supported that. It’s going to help them, and good for them.”