This morning higher education was busy on The Hill with a hearing in House Capital Budget and a work session before the House Higher Education Committee.

House Capital Budget

This morning began early with the House Capital Budget scheduled for a public hearing on Governor Inslee’s proposed 2014 supplemental capital budget.

Evergreen, along with other higher education stakeholders, testified to the impact of the supplemental budget on institutions and students.

Evergreen thanked the Legislature for providing the College with the authority to enter into a certificate of participation, through the Office of the State Treasurer, to purchase the building the College currently leases for Evergreen’s Tacoma program. Evergreen noted that the certificate of participation would allow the College to establish a permanent site for the program, which has been in existence for over 30 years, by redirecting the current lease rate toward the purchase of a permanent location for the program. The impact of this action would be to create equity in an owned existing building and provide Evergreen and its students with certainty with regard to the future of the program, benefiting not only the College but the State.

Evergreen also asked the Committee to work with the College to provide funds to meet a gap in resources to implement a microturbine project on campus. The project which is supported by the Washington Department of Commerce, Evergreen students, and Puget Sound Energy would replace existing failing infrastructure, deploy state of the art technology, generate energy savings, reduce the college’s carbon footprint and provide a great return on investment. The College is asking for $499,000

In mid-December Governor Inslee released his proposed 2014 Supplemental Capital budget.

The Governor provided funding for a small number of projects across higher education. This includes authority for Evergreen to enter into a certificate of participation to purchase the existing facility in Tacoma for the College’s Tacoma program; $2 million to remove, clean and dispose of two underground diesel oil tanks at Central Washington University; and $5 to renovate the Carver Academic Center at Western Washington University.

House Higher Education

The Council of Presidents along with representatives from the Office of Financial Management and the Education Research Data Center presented as a panel on the public, baccalaureate incentive funding model task force.

The panel provided an overview of the proviso language that established the task force in the biennial budget, the data used as the source for the metrics included in the report, and the task force’s  eight recommendations if incentive funding (i.e. performance funding) were established in Washington for the public baccalaureate institutions.

The eight recommendations include:

• Support “Washington-specific” statewide achievement goals based on college access and completion, which represent the state’s greatest need.
• Identify institution-specific metrics based on institutional mission.
• Provide new, up-front state performance funding investment in conjunction with the state budget processes.
• Establish a simple, on-going system for monitoring and funding institution-specific metrics that aligns with the biennial budgeting process.
• Start the timeline for performance funding now and renew on a biennial basis going forward.
• Pursue baseline funding objectives through adequate maintenance level funding, institution-level policy investments, and performance incentive funding.
• Use increased state funding over time to pursue a 50/50 balance between tuition and state support.
• Repeal and replace other statutory statewide performance goals and processes.

The institutions will present on institutional metrics before the House Higher Education Committee tomorrow and in the Senate on Thursday.