Legislators agree any budget cuts should be spread equally among all state colleges, universities

CARSON CITY — Nevada higher education officials and state legislators agreed today that rather than cutting the budgets of the state’s two universities by 50 percent, reductions should be equalized around all of the state's colleges and universities.

"If there are budget cuts, then it should follow that they are proportionate," Vice Chancellor Dan Klaich told a joint Senate-Assembly budget committee.

Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, agreed, saying she could not envision the 50 percent cuts that Gov. Jim Gibbons' budget would impose on the University of Nevada, Reno and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Buckley said legislators need to make sure that "no campus takes a disproportionate cut."

Under Gibbons' two-year budget, state funds to the Higher Education System of Nevada would be cut by $473 million, or 36 percent. The two universities would have much higher cuts than the colleges.

During the hearing, Senate Finance Chairman Bernice Mathews, D-Reno, several times asked Klaich to be more candid about the cuts the university system would make if Gibbons' budget eventually becomes law.

At one point, he said that 2,000 to 2,200 faculty members and support workers would be laid off if the budget had to be reduced by the full 36 percent.

Klaich said the system’s plan of handling the cuts is almost completed.

The budget reductions are coming at a time when the university system expects a 6.3 percent increase in the student population in 2009-10 and a 3.1 percent increase in 2010-11.

Contact Capital Bureau Chief Ed Vogel at evogel@reviewjournal.com or 775-687-3901.