For the most part, I try to avoid talking politics or economics on here but I’m going to make an exception here and talk about both at once.
I found out on Friday that the Arizona State government has proposed massive budget cuts to deal with the current state deficit. I find this to be very interesting because when Janet Napolitano left office last week, she had said that everything was in good shape. But as soon as she got sworn in as Secretary of State in DC, those left behind here totally scrapped whatever it was that she had in place, instigated panic among all state employees and threatened to, as ASU President Michael Crow has said, put the state of Arizona education and economies back to Third World conditions.
The thing is this isn’t just something that will affect the universities. It will also affect K-12 schools. They would face a cut of $900 MILLION!!!!!! Currently, Arizona is ranked 49th in how much we spend on our K-12 education. So what – we’re going for absolutely last place here?
We’re talking about 30% of the budget for the universities. Imagine for every $100 you brought in, you had to give up $30. How would a cut of that magnitude affect you? So you’re probably thinking – no big deal because they’ll just raise tuition again and no one will even feels it. But the thing you need to know about tuition is that the universities collect it and then turn it right over to the state. The state then budgets a portion of that back to the universities. Tuition doesn’t run the university. Tuition runs the state.
This brings up one of my biggest points. These decisions have been made in a STATIC environment. There was obviously no consideration given to actual market actions and reactions. In real life, one decision will lead to another. The market will react to external forces.
One example: So the state is telling us that less of that money is going to be returned back to the university to be able to actually serve its mission. So what are the options? The university could try maintaining the same levels of students and make up for the difference by increasing tuition and therefore bringing in additional revenue. But while that looks good on paper, if tuition increases, not as many people will come. It will be more affordable to go somewhere else or to not go at all. That means that the tuition will have to continue to increase which will continue to scare off more students. So what’s another option – cut programs to cut costs – which means fewer students, less tuition revenue, and another cycle of loss?
Lets look at it from another angle – let’s just increase the size of the classes, cut 2000 positions and now we’ll be good, right? Well, let’s look at the implications of this one. Ok let’s say I get fired. I immediately pull out everything I’ve put into my state retirement fund – pulling from the state coffers. Then, let’s assume that because the economy is bad, I can’t find another job. So I get in line and start getting unemployment payments – from the state coffers. And since I don’t have a job, the state isn’t collecting state taxes from my paycheck anymore. I lose my house, adding to the housing crisis and further decreasing how much is collected in property taxes. So how did the state get any better off? How did that balance the budget? 2000 people just lost their jobs and had to turn to the state for assistance.
On paper, the cut seems to work. But reality is not static. And I gotta be honest with you. I don’t think that the people that drafted that budget took any reality into consideration.
One suggestion that is out there, proposed by a member of the same political party as the legislator that actually made this budget proposal. She suggested that instead of just cutting education, we look at other voter approved initiatives. See there’s this law says that initiatives put in by vote of ‘we the people’ can’t have their budgets adjusted by legislators. Well, this rep has suggested that we have an emergency vote in March to put those on the chopping block. This would allow us to cut the budget to fund the no-smoking ban or other things. These things are obviously important because ‘we the people’ voted for them but they might just not be as important to ‘we the people’ as education. This sounds like at the very least, a great place to start!
So I know that the universities are willing take their FAIR share of the cuts. But come on… let’s try to play fair here.
So now comes the important part. This is my call to action. I’m asking everyone I know that lives in AZ to write your legislators. You can go to this website to look up who your legislators are:
http://www.azleg.gov/alisStaticPages/HowToContactMember.asp. You can go this website to get info about what’s going on:
http://www.speakupnowaz.org/.
Look – I know it’s a lot to ask but I’m asking you to contact your legislators. This is important. This does require our action. So please. Don’t leave it to someone else. YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. But you can only do it if you do SOMETHING!!!
