Update on budget issues

May 31 , 2005
Letter to NMU Community

Dear NMU faculty and staff,

I have returned from Japan, having been a part of Marquette’s sister city delegation, and I wanted to write a brief update on the recent news from Lansing. Last Wednesday (May 25), the House Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee released the House Republicans’ details of its proposed Workforce Investment Needs (WIN) formula. Northern does not fare well in this plan. Keep in mind that there are many steps yet to take before this plan would land as a bill on the Governor’s desk. Still, you need to understand the details of the proposal.

The House’s formula takes the $1.4 billion proposed for higher education and applies it to the formula through the following factors: enrollment, out-of-state students, degree programs and completion, and research dollars. The way the House has weighed these factors, NMU stands to lose 31% of our state funding or about $14 million. However, the report does include a recommendation that no one university gain or lose more than 5 percent of its current appropriation rate for the next fiscal year. In this formula, Northern would lose 5% or about $2.2 million. This amount, added to the Governor’s Executive Order from this past winter, means Northern would have a $3 million shortfall for fiscal year 2006. What may not be immediately apparent in the way some media have reported the House proposal is that NMU will continue to lose more than $2 million each year for the next 5-6 years. Obviously, this would be devastating if this becomes the final version of the funding bill.

I will spend much of this week and next downstate. The Senate Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee is tentatively slated to present its legislative proposal in early June. Then a compromise of the two versions of higher education funding will have to be worked out. That could happen in a special conference committee during the summer, or it might be in August or September.

On campus the NMU President’s Council will be meeting regularly to continue its work on budget reductions, new revenue sources, and developing additional legislative and budget- planning strategies. Your unit leaders will provide you more details about the process and progress via your NMU e-mail account, so please check that throughout the summer.

I know this is not cheery news to start off the week. Please remember that the legislative process is a complicated one and we may be in this fight for a long time yet – and we will put up a fight. The idea that our campus will bear the brunt of a state-created funding problem is unacceptable. I will depend on you to join me in this fight.

Les Wong
NMU President