On UNC funding, governor should board his own 'Comeback' train

Published March 7, 2014

Editorial by Winston-Salem Journal, March 6, 2014.

UNC leaders are on a collision course with the state’s budget director regarding budget adjustments for 2014-15, and Gov. Pat McCrory must support the university system.

His budget director, Art Pope, “took university leaders to task” recently, the News & Observer reported, for requesting an extra $288 million next year. He computed that as an 11.3 percent increase request and called it a fantasy.

Pope, who has his own conservative political constituency, has long been a UNC critic. The UNC operations request alone is for 4.6 percent. And while Pope had instructed state agencies to keep increase requests to 2 percent or less, the university’s response must be considered in historical context.

Over the last five years, the UNC operational budget has been cut by hundreds of millions of dollars. UNC officials have found efficiencies to cover some of those lost funds, but they’ve also weakened the education they deliver.

Additionally, students have been hit with big tuition and fee increases while state funding has dropped. All of this in a state where the constitution guarantees a university education that is as close to free as is “practicable.”

The rest of the university system’s request, or $163 million, is needed to maintain and repair facilities across UNC member institutions. A UNC spokeswoman, responding to a question about the repair request, told the Raleigh newspaper that the university did not expect that all the projects could be financed at one time and the university would only anticipate its usual share of whatever construction money is available.

McCrory is caught in the middle here. On one side, Pope is his budget director. On the other, most members of the Republican-controlled UNC Board of Governors are his allies, too. And the Republican-controlled General Assembly put them in.

Pope is also contradicting McCrory, poor-mouthing state finances while the governor boasts of a “Carolina Comeback,” an economy recovering quickly under his leadership.

As for the repairs and renovations UNC requested and which Pope dismissed in a memo, remember: McCrory made infrastructure improvements an administration cornerstone.

With the economy improving, it’s time to begin rebuilding the UNC system. The UNC board realizes that. McCrory must as well.

http://www.journalnow.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-on-unc-funding-governor-should-board-his-own-comeback/article_d4a4bcb2-a55a-11e3-b122-0017a43b2370.html