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The State Senate budget proposal to give the University of Hawaii a $275 million increase in funding comes with strings attached, including a $100,000 pay cut for UH West Oahu’s chancellor and the elimination of the communications director and bureau director positions for equal employment.
The 24 “reservations,” which dictate how some of UH’s money can be spent, are unprecedented in modern times, said Kalvert Young, UH’s chief financial affairs officer, who previously served as the state department’s budget and finance director.
“The Senate version would be the most prescriptive and specific I’ve seen,” Young said. “This is a development that has taken place in the last three to five years.”
The Senate version of House Bill 1600 would eliminate more than 90 jobs across the system of seven community colleges, three four-year campuses and the UH Board of Regents.
At the same time, the Senate plan calls for 128 new hires and research funding, which UH never requested, Young said.
“There’s a lot of money for things that UH hasn’t asked for — for UH to conduct studies on prison reform, cultural heritage, DOE (Department of Education) master planning and highway construction on the Big Island,” he said he. “They added positions on specific campuses that we didn’t ask for, mostly in the community colleges: landscapers, security guards, janitors … positions for faculty, additional staff for building and ground guards, administrative support, faculty of food sciences.”
In a message to the UH community on Tuesday, Young wrote, “Cuting about $2.4 million in funding for jobs while adding more than $274 million to the operating budget makes little financial sense. Since the downsizing is not for financial reasons, this action may appear targeted and punitive.”
State Senator Donovan Dela Cruz, chair of the Senate Ways and Appropriations Committee, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser Tuesday night that the Senate budget plans for UH are designed to hold the university to account and the Senate bills introduced in this session how Proposals to include hiring more nursing teachers and several studies aligned with state priorities such as B. the impact of so-called sand “burritos” on beach erosion.
The proposed $100,000 pay cut for UH West Oahu chancellor Maenette KP Ah Nee-Benham reflects the time she actually spends on campus, Dela Cruz said.
When asked about criticism that the Senate is too involved in UH staffing and operational issues, Dela Cruz said, “The main thing is, we want accountability, we want transparency, we want the president and the regents to do their jobs. We want to make UH more relevant to what the state is trying to achieve.”
Neal Milner, a political scientist and former professor of political science at UH who once served as UH’s ombudsman, said that although voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment in 2000 that gave UH autonomy, especially the senators of the States continue to try to “micromanage” “personnel and operations.
He called the relationship between the Senate and UH “terrible.”
“It’s in the state constitution, but autonomy has always been trench warfare: you fight for a trifle, you lose, you win,” Milner said. “The concept has never been accepted by the legislature, especially in the Senate, where there is personal animosity. This is clearly some kind of brazen attempt to micromanage the university and totally ignore the kind of autonomy the university was constitutionally supposed to have to govern itself. … This (budget proposal) is clearly a slap in the face. They say, ‘We’ll give you more money, but you have to play by the rules as we see them.’”
The House version of the state budget also calls for additional money for UH: an increase of $129.4 million, compared to the $274.9 million increase proposed by the Senate.
But the House version doesn’t go into the level of detail included in the Senate version, which Young says doesn’t explain spending priorities.
“Why the Senate would want to hire a janitor at Honolulu Community College is not articulated, or why the Senate would want to get rid of Dan (Meisenzahl, UH Director of Communications), or why the Chancellor at UH West Oahu only makes a $145,000 salary,” said young.
Both the House and Senate versions will enter conference committee meetings scheduled for April 29 to reach a compromise.
Rep. Sylvia Luke, chair of the House Finance Committee, declined to provide a theory behind the Senate proposal or to describe the relationship between the Senate and UH.
“The budget is a negotiation between the House of Representatives and the Senate,” she said. “In the next two weeks we’re going to the conference to work out the differences.”
When asked about UH’s autonomy, Luke said, “Even with the constitutional provision of the amendment, funding is a statewide concern. Funding remains the responsibility of the governor and legislature. As far as concrete dealings within the university are concerned, we have tried to do justice to the UH’s goal of autonomy.”
Last month, the UH-Manoa Faculty Senate passed a resolution titled “Identifying Inappropriate Legislative Actions Undermining University Governance and Freedom of Speech,” specifically aimed at state Senator Donna Kim, the chair of the college committee, who did not immediately respond to a Inquiry responded for comment Tuesday.
The faculty senate claimed that Kim “repeatedly introduced legislation to usurp decision-making authority from the UH Board of Regents, UH administration and UH faculty”; in the 2021 legislature, “promoted the abolition of the position of tenured faculty member”; and that year a bill was introduced “which attempted to change the term of office and to transfer administrative power over the university from the Board of Regents to the Legislature”.
The legislative session began in January with a tense two-hour hearing by Senate committees, led by Dela Cruz and Kim, that grilled then-UH football coach Todd Graham, athletic director David Matlin and President David Lassner over a sports program that would make lawmakers assumed to be in disarray after more than a dozen players left.
Current and former players and family members gave testimony about alleged abuse under Graham.
“The first thing David Lassner said was, ‘You’re basically ripping us off. They said there couldn’t be oral testimony, then they called in people with complaints,” Milner said.
During the session, Senate legislation directed at UH would also have stripped the UH President of oversight of the community colleges and created a separate Community College Board of Regents. removed the UH President’s procurement powers; urged UH governors to approve salaries over $200,000 for UH coaches; and gave Regents the power to hire and fire UH athletic directors and coaches.
All bills appear to be dead.
Regardless of what happens to UH’s budget, Milner expects tensions between the Senate and UH to continue.
“The Senate has always been more than willing, in his words, to ‘oversee the university,'” he said.
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