Lawmakers can’t reach deal on cuts

CARSON CITY -- Key lawmakers failed to reach agreement on cuts to the state's higher education system Friday, postponing a hearing to finalize the college and university budget until Monday.

"We will be closing the higher education budget Monday afternoon," Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, told reporters after legislators concluded three hours of discussions behind closed doors Friday morning. "We are committed to rolling back the cuts the governor has proposed to the higher education system."

The cuts being discussed are percentages in the teens, Buckley confirmed, short of the 36 percent cut to higher education proposed by Gov. Jim Gibbons but above what higher education officials say the system can tolerate.

"We would like to restore as much funding as we can, recognizing that there will still be significant cuts because of the economic downturn," Buckley said.

Other legislators leaving the meeting declined to comment, saying Buckley had been chosen to announce the result and spoke for all of them.

Legislators have asked their fiscal staff to crunch more numbers and "work through different scenarios" over the weekend so that they can come to a decision Monday, Buckley said.

The higher education budget is the major remaining wild card in the spending plan being formulated for the next two years. That it wasn't decided as planned Friday throws a wrench in the schedule legislators are trying to stick to. They had hoped to know by Friday how much money the state will need to fund the programs lawmakers believe are necessary.

Dan Klaich, executive vice chancellor of the university system, said a 10 percent cut would be "reasonable and realistic," but if it got as high as 15 percent, "those numbers would be absolutely devastating."

Gibbons proposed cutting $473 million from the university system's 2007 funding of $1.3 billion. That would mean cutting the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the University of Nevada, Reno by about 50 percent, though Gibbons believes the universities could avoid severe cuts by raising tuition.

If they were to reduce the cut to just 10 percent, lawmakers would have to come up with about $340 million in extra funding for higher education at a time when state revenues face massive shortfalls.

The university system's Board of Regents has moved a special meeting scheduled for Tuesday to Thursday because of Friday's delay. Regents are expected to discuss the budget as well as the possibility of tuition and fee increases.

Review-Journal writer Richard Lake contributed to this report. Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919.