Friday, February 27, 2015

Get these huge changes out of the Walker budget

What is the entire nuts-and-bolts remake of the UW System - - similar to the policy-driven restructuring of the DNR and its oversight board - - doing in the state's bi-ennual budget?

Along with a host of other major items across something like 2,000 pages of detailed, data-laden text?

This budget could have been much simpler if these major policy matters got the separate and careful attention they deserve with honest hearings scheduled for the public's convenience.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I donno, jimmy, no longer keeping rape stats means binge drinkin' in UW towns just got a lot more fun!

This is really a pay-back to the Tavern League!

I can't wait to go out and drink myself sh!t-faced with all the young ladies!

Thanks -- I stand with Walker!!

Milwaukeean said...

Spot on.

Hearings ought to be held on every UW campus, for every community -- every current student, every prospective student, every current staffer or prospective employee, as well as every interested member of the public -- to understand the massive impact of removing their universities from oversight of elected officials to instead be run by a board of mainly the governor's appointees.

Every clause now part of state statutes would be under a public authority and no longer would have legislative oversight -- more hearings -- if up for change. All it would take would be a moment at a meeting of the governor's appointees, without even discussion there, if under automatic approval (meaning, previously decided in a hallway or on non-state emai, etc.).

It has taken many decades to devise and revise Chapter 36 of state statutes to be a model, admired across the country, of how to run a university system. Much of its wording harks back to earlier work for more than a century and a half at a world-class university.

All of which Walker proposes to dump, with legislators tasked to understand an entirely different document's ramifications in only a matter of days to do so amid all that is in the budget to be dealt with in only a matter of months -- and all while the universities are limited in time to understand and respond as to impact, while mired in trying to cope with Walker's massive budget cuts, too. As he planned, of course.

(Indeed, universities already are coping with the impact of budget cuts yet to come -- losing previously approved hires, cancelling more hires, losing future graduate students owing to cancelling TAships and other funding for next fall with fewer classes, slowdowns on undergraduate admissions for lack of technical staff, etc. -- all with impact to come in communities (or neighborhoods in larger cities, such as Milwaukee) that count on students and staff to rent, buy, etc., from local landlords and businesses.