Lawmakers have issues with NIC

Republican lawmakers are set to tour North Idaho College’s new Health Sciences Building on Aug. 9, but those North Idaho legislators aren’t just interested in a show and tell.

They also want NIC President Michael Burke to sit down and listen.

Several issues have raised the ire of local Republicans, beginning with the college’s recent decision to boost its budget by using $1 million in forgone taxes. Now legislators say the college has missed the application deadline for a share of $125 million in federal work force training grants – at a time when they say the college should be more aggressive in increasing professional-technical offerings.

“Money is very short, especially for professional-technical training,” said Rep. Frank Henderson, R-Post Falls. “We thought it was an opportunity to at least apply and for some reason they did not.”

Burke said there’s still another round of grants – another $125 million – to be awarded and that the college is working to put together an application in time for the next deadline.

“I don’t want NIC’s name associated with a poorly done, hastily written grant,” Burke said. “I want it to be done right with all the possibility in the world that it has to be funded. It does more harm than good to put out a poorly written grant.”

The availability of grant money in that second round is up in the air, though, according to Henderson. It all depends on the federal budget picture for the subsequent year, he said.

The legislators’ frustration over the missed application deadline is just one topic the lawmakers plan to broach in the meeting with Burke.

Another concern the lawmakers have is the college’s decision to tap into forgone taxes – collecting $1 million in additional taxes that the college opted not to collect in the past.

Rep. Bob Nonini, R-Coeur d’Alene, said he’s also upset that the college hired a private grant writer, an expense of about $8,000, to write its grant application.

“NIC is not using resources that are available to us, like the Panhandle Area Council,” Nonini said. The Panhandle Area Council has a grant writer whose services are utilized by several local entities.

Robert Ketchum, head of NIC’s Workforce Training Center, said NIC began working with the local Workforce Investment Board, which the governor has since dissolved, to put together a grant application as soon as they learned the funds were available. With the help of the local Workforce Investment Board, Ketchum said, NIC chose the grant writer.

It was a decision Ketchum said was based on finding “someone very experienced.”

The lawmakers also plan to talk to NIC about expanding its professional-technical offerings.

Nonini said he’s heard concerns from several manufacturing businesses in the Post Falls area that are having trouble finding enough skilled workers. He wants to put pressure on NIC to expand its professional-technical offerings and raised the possibility of legislation requiring community colleges to dedicate a certain percentage of state allocations to professional-technical programs.

At a luncheon this week, Nonini said he shared that idea with Burke.

“Dr. Burke didn’t like it at all,” he said. “He seemed to be pretty opposed.”

Burke said Wednesday he felt it would be more prudent for lawmakers to provide more targeted funding for professional-technical education than to require community colleges to support the programs with additional money from their general funds. He said a great deal of money from the general fund is already used to support professional-technical programs, on everything from utilities to career counseling to funding pay increases for professional-technical instructors.

“In my mind the pie needs to be bigger,” Burke said.

Henderson said he asked the college in December for a five-year plan so he could understand the direction the college was headed.

“Those of us like myself who are legislators, we have the responsibility to fund their meritorious ideas,” Henderson said. “We need to know what their ideas are first of all and, second, we’re entitled to judge whether they’re meritorious.”

One avenue the college is pursuing is working with Kootenai County’s public school districts to build a shared professional-technical center.

According to an annual report from the Post Falls School District, a consultant hired by NIC identified several programs that would be housed in the facility – a proposed 200,000-square-foot building in a central location.

The cost is still being studied, according to the report, but the school districts and NIC discussed the possibility of NIC bringing a funding proposal before voters within a year.

“We’re moving as quickly as we can on it, but we still have some issues that have to be resolved among the partners,” NIC spokesman Kent Propst said. Some of those issues, according to the report from the Post Falls district, are “the current economic climate and community attitudes regarding property tax measures.”

Nonini said he thinks the joint facility is a good idea, but an increased tax burden on local property owners would concern him.

“You have to invest in the future,” he said. “It just doesn’t come without any investment.”

He suggested looking to sources other than local taxpayers for funding, though.