Over the objections of Republican members, the joint money committees Thursday approved overall budget cuts to the system of higher education totaling $84.5 million.
That includes a $102 million reduction in General Fund money, offset by a $16.7 million increase in student fees and tuition.
The overall budget for NSHE is $2.03 billion for the coming biennium as recommended by the governor. Of that, just under $1.28 billion is General Fund money. Nearly all of the rest, $743 million, comes from student fees and tuition.
But Republicans including Heidi Seevers Gansert and Ben Kieckhefer, both Reno, argued that, with the $909 million increase in projected revenues by the Economic Forum, NSHE wasn’t being treated fairly compared to social services and K-12 that are seeing add-backs. Just Wednesday, the Human Services subcommittee voted to restore 6 percent cuts made last summer to Medicaid providers at a cost of $301 million.
But Gansert said the subcommittee report recommends no add-backs for NSHE. She said that will cause damage to a variety of programs including the fledgling medical school at UNLV.
Kieckhefer said the subcommittee report contains a $25 million cut to the College of Southern Nevada, $10 million out of the new medical school and $1.2 million from low income scholarship support.
“I think we can do better and I hope we get there,” he said.
But Speaker Jason Frierson, D-Las Vegas, said the executive branch and lawmakers worked with NSHE to make the cuts in places the system said it could absorb.
And Ways and Means Chair Maggie Carlton, D-Las Vegas, said there may still be opportunities to fix some of these cuts.
“But if I have a choice between kindergarteners and college kids, I’m there for the kindergarteners,” she said.
Assembly Majority Leader Teresa Benitez Thompson, D-Reno, supported the emphasis on social services and K-12 as well.
“Social safety welfare programs don’t have investment accounts to pull money from to make them whole,” she said.
Carlton also argued that in the university system, “there’s a bit of a curtain and a lot of the dollars at NSHE are behind the curtain.”
In addition to Gansert and Kieckhefer, Republicans Jill Tolles, Tom Roberts, Greg Hafen, Glen Leavitt, Robin Titus and Pete Goicoechea voted against accepting the subcommittee report, which was adopted with unanimous Democratic support.
By percentage, Western Nevada College was hardest hit by the General Fund reductions, losing more than 10 percent in each year of the biennium. At this point, WNC’s General Fund appropriation is set at $26.75 million over the two years.
UNR loses just shy of 9 percent General Fund over the biennium while the two medical schools lose 11-plus percent each year.
