No accord on higher education budget coming today

CARSON CITY — Key lawmakers failed to reach agreement on cuts to the state’s higher education system today, 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 this 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 this morning throws a wrench in the schedule legislators are trying to stick to. They had hoped to know by today 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,” requiring “fundamental” changes to campuses around the state.

Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919.