For Californians who feel they are part of anAlice-in-Wonderland budget process, check out what's going on in theneighboring state of Nevada. Governor Jim Gibbons recently announcedsome draconian solutions to the state's $1.5 billion budget shortfall.
Theone most shocking is a 40+ percent cut to the university systembudget. Imagine the reaction here in California to a cut of nearlyhalf the spending for higher education.
Boardof Regents head Jim Rogers likened the governor's approach to askingpeople to live in a house that had been half burned out in a fire,saying that a house without key parts such as the kitchen or bedroomswas really no house at all.
The University of Nevada, Reno campus has taken anunusually heavy hit - a recommended 47 percent budget cut - that hascaused Berkeleyesque protests from UNR students and NIMBY complaintsfrom the community's political representatives.
According to the Reno Gazette-Journal,Assemblyman David Bobzien, D-Reno, said students would have to shouldera 225 percent tuition increase to cover the funding shortfall from thegovernor's budget cuts.
Thenewspaper quoted Bobzien as asking students: "... do you think a budgetthat includes a 47 percent budget cut to the University of Nevada, Renois a vision? "
"No!" the crowd roared.
Itseems clear that the governor has laid out a radical budget designed tostimulate some heated discussion. In fact, the governor started thatdialogue himself during his recent State of the State address to thelegislature when he guaranteed that a safety net would remain in placeprotecting Nevada's poorest and urged the state to find alternatives tothe gambling industry in order to protect its future. He specificallysuggested that the state's entrepreneurs focus on environmentalbusinesses such as green energy development.
What's particularly interesting about the cutbacks inhigher education is that they directly impact the type of research thatdrives the innovation required to create green businesses. SiliconValley would not be the source of so many technological advanceswithout the presence of UC campuses in Berkeley, Davis and Santa Cruz(and, of course, Stanford, which is not subject to the state budgetingprocess). So how does Gov. Gibbons think that green industries willsupplant gambling as the number one business in Nevada without strongresearch universities? Maybe he's just throwing the dice.
Therewill be plenty of negotiating before a final budget is drawn up, andthe governor surely expects challenges to his priorities. Then again,Nevada has never been as friendly toward education as has California,and its state universities have not brought the kinds of advances tothe world that have come out of the UC's. So it's hard to gage howserious the proposed cuts really are.
Onething is certain, the Nevada level of cuts to higher education wouldbring a storm of protests throughout California. Meanwhile, weCalifornians can get some relief from our own budget angst by watchingour much smaller neighbors struggle with its own unique set ofproblems. It makes us look so almost sane by comparison.