Two key Democratic legislators took issue Wednesday with the governor’s campaign to get the University of Colorado to back down from a 28 percent tuition increase for some in-state students.
Rep. Tom Plant, a Democrat on the Joint Budget Committee, said the panel can’t even consider a proposal to cut the University of Colorado’s budget authority by $13.8 million in an effort to block the tuition increase.
Members of Gov. Bill Owens’ staff said the committee can take up the plan, even though it would not become final unless the legislature passes it during its session next year.
Plant, from Nederland, and two other Democratic JBC members held news conferences in their hometowns to comment on the plan approved Tuesday by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education.
In Grand Junction, JBC member Bernie Buescher said university regents should set tuition rates, not the legislature.
“I think the colleges and universities should have authority to set tuition,” Buescher said. “I think we can use good, old-fashioned economics to take care of this issue.”
Plant said the issue of rising tuition will be addressed only if voters approve a referendum in November allowing the state to keep revenues that would be refunded under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.
“I don’t think further cuts are necessarily the answer,” he said. “It’s not a sustainable system.”
Owens spokesman Dan Hopkins said there are no plans for a special session to consider the CU budget cut, but if the JBC approves the proposal at its meeting on Tuesday, CU will be warned about its tuition hike.
“It will put CU on notice to proceed with such a tuition increase at its own risk,” he added.
JBC chairman Abel Tapia, D-Pueblo, said he is having staffers research whether his committee can slash CU’s spending authority, but he wants to discuss the proposal on Tuesday.
“I think I’m going to be insistent that we are going to talk about it,” he said. “By raising in-state tuition by 28 percent, we lose a whole lot of students.”
CU officials said the in-state tuition increase is necessary because the state has not been funding higher education enough, and out-of-state students will go to other schools if they have to pay much more than they do now.
Plant said that with inflation and enrollment increases, CU has seen a 55 percent drop in state funding since 2001. He said the fall TABOR referendum would allow the state to increase the stipend it pays for in-state students to attend Colorado schools.
With the increase, CU’s tuition for the average undergraduate student on the Boulder campus will be about $6,800 next year.
In other developments, the CCHE met last week for a question-and-answer session about CU tuition, but the staff forgot to post the meeting as required by law. Officials said the staff posted the meeting announcement on the commission’s bulletin board but forgot to send e-mails or put it on the website.
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm contributed to this report.
Staff writer Arthur Kane can be reached at akane@denverpost.com or 303-820-1626.
