No deal on university budget

Agreement on the university system's budget stalled Friday in part because of a dispute over the move by southern lawmakers to beef up UNLV and College of Southern Nevada budgets.

Leadership met three hours behind closed doors Friday morning before canceling the scheduled closing session.

Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, declined to give any details other than to say another closing session would be scheduled Monday.

"We're committed to rolling back the cuts the governor has proposed to the university system," said Buckley acting as spokesman for the group. "We'd like to restore as much funding as we can."

Buckley said everyone in the meeting agrees the 36 percent, $843.9 million General Fun reduction in Gov. Jim Gibbons' proposed budget is unacceptable. That translates to a 47.7 percent cut at UNR and a 51.9 percent cut at UNLV which campus officials say would destroy Nevada's university system.

She said lawmakers have reduced that cut substantially.

"We're in the teens," she said. "We'd like it to be as low as possible but it's still going to be substantial."

Dan Klaich, executive vice chancellor for the system, said 15 percent "would be devastating."

"Those are numbers that fundamentally change the campuses," he said.

Asked about a 10 percent cut, he said: "I think that would be reasonable and realistic."

But Klaich conceded he doubts the reduction can be held to 5 percent: "I don't think that's reasonable under the current circumstances."

The disagreement centers on a proposal which would to put some money into UNLV and CSN before applying the per student funding formulas which set the majority of state funding for the different campuses. Southern lawmakers and officials at those campuses say they are being cheated by the existing formulas.

UNLV is suffering because that campus has a declining enrollment and the amount each campus gets is based on a weighted three year enrollment average.

CSN's problem is the opposite: It's enrollment is growing so fast the formula can't keep up with needs.

UNR is also growing and has benefited from the existing formula structure.

Senate Minority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, has opposed adding to UNLV and CSN budgets outside the formula, which would reduce the total available for campuses to divide using the formula resulting in a decrease at UNR, Truckee Meadows Community College and Western Nevada College.

Also mixed in the dispute is the regents' decision changing that formula from a weighted three year average to one year " the current year. While that benefits UNR about $4 million over the biennium, it would pump $10.6 million into UNLV. But doing so would take money away from CSN, TMCC and Great Basin College. WNC would get about the same under that scheme.

Lawmakers adjourned Friday for the Mother's Day weekend. Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, said she knows of no meetings planned over the weekend.