More on the Milwaukee-Madison Divide

The Journal Sentinel is running another story this morning on the economic divide between Milwaukee and Madison.

At the center of it, once again, is UW-Madison. As an example of how the Madison economy has grown since the 2001 recession, the article notes:

The local GDP data was compiled by the Bureau of Economic Analysis based on information from individual business establishments.

When they were gathered in 2001, Virent Energy Systems Inc., Madison, contributed nothing because it did not exist.

It was started in 2002 to work on making fuels and chemicals from sugars, using technology developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Eric Apfelbach, president and chief executive officer. By 2005, it had 18 employees and added half a million dollars in sales to Madison's GDP. Now, it employs 60, has sales of about $4 million and just raised $21 million in venture capital.

"All that money comes into town from out of town and pays for salaries and contractors and leases," Apfelbach said. "These high-tech start-ups that can raise venture capital are really economic multipliers."

It was essentially the same story that the JS ran last December, except that one was based on a Wisconsin Taxpayer Alliance report on the growing income disparities between Milwaukee and Madison.

According to that article:

Madison has some "built-in advantages," such as the major research center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and that it's the state capital, said Ryan Parsons, a research associate for the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance.

"But I think what Milwaukee needs to do if it wants to regain some of that balance that was lost in the last 50 years is more of a focus on education and retaining good college graduates," Parsons said. "One of the reasons Madison has such an edge over Milwaukee is having people who can fill high-tech science research jobs. A lot of that work force is missing from a city like Milwaukee."

When commenting on this article back in December, I concluded that reports like this "need to be kept in mind come budget time."

So here we are with a similar report that's released in the midst of budget talks, and part of what's on the table in those talks is the UW System's Growth Agenda, which includes provisions for both expanding the number of graduates and funneling money into the development of research capacities at UW-Milwaukee and the other campuses.

In spite of all the public squawking politicians on both sides engaged in regarding the differences over K-12 education in the budget, it's really higher education where the true budget differences exist. To be sure, the biggest difference between the Dem budget and the GOP budget on K-12 education is where the money should be spent.

In terms of higher education, on the other hand, the two sides are closer to $100 million apart on how much should be funded in the first place, including around $10 million that was dedicated specifically to enhancing the research proposals focusing on engineering and biotechnology made by Chancellor Santiago for UW-Milwaukee.

Part of the problem is how the two sides are discussing the funding issue. On the GOP side, funding is discussed as if it's just aimed at an operating budget to keep the UW System afloat. The talk is about what the UW System needs.

And that fits with the Assembly budget proposal for the UW. As the Dems have rightly pointed out, the $62 million increase for the UW budget that the GOP has proposed would only leave around $6 million in truly new funding outside of what is needed to pay off bonds and increased utility bills.

But, the thing is -- and the reports outlined above support this -- the funding for the UW System doesn't stop with the UW System. Funding for the UW System isn't just paying for stuff, it's also investing in a state resource that has a proven track record of driving and, just as importantly, transforming the economy in this state.

And attacking these investments as nothing more than money grabs isn't providing any real "protection" for the taxpayers, particularly in the long run.

The Lone "No" Vote on Reciprocity

As expected, the JFC approved a new tuition reciprocity agreement with Minnesota yesterday in a 15-1 vote.

The lone vote against the new agreement was Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend). Grothman's complaint was that Wisconsin will be sending about $12 million per year to Minnesota to compensate for the fact that Wisconsin students pay less than U of M tuition while Minnesota students pay more than UW tuition.

According to Grothman, that means the state is subsidizing Wisconsin students who want to go out of state for their higher education.

This, of course, is quite a stance to take considering -- as higher education board director Connie Hutchinson explained to Grothman -- the extra money that Wisconsin makes off Minnesota reciprocity students more than makes up for the subsidy payment.

In spite of this explanation, apparently Grothman still voted against the agreement.

I know it's a nit-picky question to ask considering the agreement passed, and overwhelmingly so, but what was Grothman's reasoning for voting against the agreement?

Did he have data that contradicts Hutchinson's statements -- in which case the entire JFC should probably know about it -- or does he just generally oppose a program that at least breaks even fiscally while simultaneously providing more affordable higher education options for Wisconsin students?

While Grothman was the lone JFC vote against the new reciprocity agreement, he wouldn't be the only GOP legislator to just oppose reciprocity altogether.

Rep. Nass Wants Say on UW Research

Evidently it wasn't enough that UW-Madison professors Erica and Rich Halverson cleared their new research project through the MacArthur Foundation, which gave them a grant to do it.

Assembly Colleges and Universities committee chair Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) apparently thinks he needs to approve it, too.

The press release by Nass tries to make a connection between the research by the Halverson's -- which focuses on studying competitive fandom and gaming through an exploration of fantasy baseball leagues -- and the need for adequate funding for the UW in the biennial budget.

Setting aside the fact that the research is funded through the private MacArthur Foundation, it is breathtakingly arrogant for Nass to think that he can judge (or even has any business judging) the validity of a study based upon a single article on it -- which he grossly short-changes in his press release -- that ran through the UW news service.

Here's Nass: "Maybe with higher taxes the Ivory Tower elites at UW-Madison can solve the great psychological mystery posed by the joy that adults and kids get while playing dodgeball or kickball. It couldn’t be that most simple of reasons – it’s fun."

Ivory Tower elites? Does Nass think that by attacking a university he's shielded from sounding pompous himself?

The Halverson's are taking time to critically examine an aspect of a much larger cultural phenomenon, fantasy gaming, that has grown extremely popular in recent years amongst a wide swath of the American public. Elitism would be to shun the fantasy phenomenon as the mindless meddling of the working classes, and it wasn't all that long ago that academia would've done just that.

Nass, meanwhile, is barking out press releases from his Capitol office with the notion that he has special oversight of and insight into how UW professors should run their research simply because he was given a chairperson post by his caucus leader.

And it's a good thing Robert Putnam didn't stop at just considering whether "it's fun" when crafting one of the most important studies on public society in recent memory, which started with an interest in bowling leagues.

Time to Renegotiate UW/UM Reciprocity

Every so often, you'll hear talk of the University of Minnesota system pulling out of its reciprocity agreement with the UW System. Now is one of those times.

The U of M's Board of Regents is getting set to vote on June 27 on whether to phase itself out of the reciprocity agreement. If it decides to start doing so in the fall of 2008, it would need to tell the UW of its plans by July 1 of this year.

The issue is that U of M tuition has grown faster than UW tuition in recent years. And since participants in the reciprocity agreement pay their home state tuition rates, this has resulted in Minnesota students paying slightly more than Wisconsin residents at UW schools -- the way it should be -- and Wisconsin students paying slightly less than Minnesota residents at U of M schools, which is understandably an issue for Minnesota.

I wasn't a big fan of U of M president Bob Bruininks when I was a grad student there a few years ago -- mostly because of the poor way in which he handled renegotiating a contract with clerical staff on campus, which resulted in a strike in 2003 -- but he did come up with a reasonable proposal for how to handle the reciprocity agreement with the UW.

Rather than simply paying home state tuition in all instances, reciprocity students would pay either their home state tuition or the resident tuition of the receiving campus, whichever was higher.

That way tuition for students from both states would remain at reasonable levels, and it would eliminate the need for compensatory payments from the UW to the U of M to cover the cost to tuition differences in the current set-up. And, if the UW wants (and the state approves), it could transfer these compensatory payments -- which amounted to $7.8 million last year -- into subsidizing the tuition costs of Wisconsin reciprocity students, thereby keeping those rates at roughly the cost of attending an in-state UW campus.

This route also has the added bonus of making sure the extra funds are going to U of M campuses via tuition, rather than into the Minnesota state general fund as the compensatory payments currently do. And, by going to the campuses rather than the general fund, the money could be used to reduce tuition levels, enhance educational offerings, or some of each.

In the end, it would be a fairer and, as a result, more sustainable arrangement than the one we currently have, and that's something that's beneficial to the systems and the families in both states.

A TABOR for UW Tuition

Chairperson for the Assembly Colleges and Universities Committee, Rep. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater), has proposed to the GOP members of the JFC a number of motions concerning the UW.

First and foremost on the list is capping tuition increases to the level of inflation, which is essentially a TABOR for tuition.

According to the press release by Nass:

Over the last ten years, the annual increase in UW System tuition has been 8.5%, while inflation has been running about 2.5% per year during that period. In 1996-97, UW System students covered only 35% of their instructional costs. Today, UW System students now pay for 58% of the instructional costs.

It's true that tuition now covers a larger portion of instructional costs. But it's also true that state GPR dollars cover a smaller portion of it. In fact, according to the LFB, while the UW System generated 34 percent of its total funding from the state in 1996-1997, only 24 percent came from the state in 2006-2007.

Yet, not once does Nass suggest putting more state money into the UW to make up even a portion of the cuts that would come through tying tuition to inflation.

And why would he? According to Nass, the difference is just waste, anyway. As he sees it:

Families in this state have no problem with paying the lion’s share of the costs of higher education. However, these families have the right to know that their hard earned money won’t be wasted on continuing the scandalous behavior and poor management that has plagued the UW System. The problem isn’t with the rank-and-file faculty and staff, it’s with the leadership of the System and it starts right at the top.

While Nass doesn't provide specifics on what wasteful scandals he's referring to, it's probably safe to assume that among the list would be the failed HR computer system and the hubbub over back-up jobs for executive level administrators like Paul Barrows.

The HR system ran up a tab of $26 million (which includes the salaries of permanent state employees who worked on the project) and Barrows was paid about $110,000 while on personal leave for seven months a few years ago.

These are troubling, indeed. And I'm sure Nass could come up with a few others to add to the list.

But I'm wondering if he could come up with enough in the past 10 years to justify the roughly $1.8 billion that an inflationary tuition cap would've cost the UW System between 1996-1997 and 2006-2007?

Yep, a little over $1.8 billion is what the UW System would be out in funding if tuition was limited to the inflation rate during each of the past ten years. You can check the math using the tuition numbers on page 18 of this LFB report and the inflation numbers on page 7 of this LFB report.

It's truly no problem to examine how we can keep UW tuition down, just as it's no problem to examine ways to keep general taxes and fees down for the state as a whole.

But we need to do so with realistic and fiscally responsible proposals that consider cost and services, as opposed to those with rigid adherence to restrictive revenue caps or uncompromising budget pledges.

Getting Domestic Partner Benefits Back in the Budget

There's some talk that domestic partner benefits for UW employees may make a reappearance in the state budget.

The JFC plans to take up the topic as an item separate from the budget with a majority vote needed to re-insert it. That means at least one Republican on the committee would need to flip since an 8-8 split won't cut it. (Side-Note: Could that lucky JFC member be Alberta Darling, who is going to face a tough race next year in an increasingly blue district?)

According to Rep. Scott Suder (R-Abbotsford), the GOP members on the Joint Finance Committee won't let that happen because allowing domestic partner benefits for UW employees is a policy issue that needs to be worked out separate from the budget. As he put it:

They can’t win this debate in the public arena, so they are trying everything they can by hiding it. The fact is that most taxpayers and voters don’t agree with the policy, and not giving the public an adequate chance to talk about it is just bad policy.

I wonder if Suder feels the same way about the Milwaukee school voucher program, which was also established through a budget bill?

Anyway, more to the point, polls suggest Suder's just wrong about the "most taxpayers and voters don't agree with this policy" line. In fact, according to a Badger Poll conducted last summer, nearly 60 percent of the state approved of civil unions for same-sex couples, which is undoubtedly a step (or, more accurately, a few steps) beyond domestic partner benefits for UW System employees.

Some conservatives will surely cling to the vote on the marriage ban as evidence that this isn't a popular provision -- as Rep. Nass did a few months ago -- but domestic partner benefits for UW employees simply isn't what the referendum was about last fall.

The issue of domestic partner benefits boils down to two points: fairness and competition.

If gay and lesbian employees are not able to marry or engage in a civil union in order to participate in spousal benefits, it is only fair to allow them another avenue to partake in this aspect of their compensation package.

And there are simple ways to regulate domestic partner benefits to ensure they aren't abused. Rick Esenberg has offered up a reasonable structure that would require the couple to share living expenses and not be allowed to legally marry.

The details could be hashed out later, but, again, the point is that there are ways to make sure the benefits aren't simply used "for the boyfriends and girlfriends of state employees," as Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch (R-West Salem) lamented back in February.

On the issue of competition, the UW System is behind the curve on domestic partner benefits. UW-Madison is the only university in the Big Ten that doesn't offer benefits to domestic partners, and that has an unquestionable impact on faculty recruitment and retention.

Just last year, for instance, an engineering researcher left UW-Madison and took his grant potential with him because the UW doesn't offer domestic partner benefits and the University of Pennsylvania, where he went, does. That professor alone amassed $3.4 million in grants over the past six years, which amounts to about $550,000 per year -- the same amount it would cost the state to offer domestic partner benefits to every UW employee.

And it's not just recruitment and retention of high profile faculty that's impacted by the lack of domestic partner benefits. The UW System is also in competition for qualified staff.

While most staff don't tend to leave geographic regions for employment in the same way as faculty, they can be lured away to one of the over 150 private employers in Wisconsin that offer domestic partner benefits, including Cardinal Stritch University, the Medical College of Wisconsin, Beloit College, Lawrence University, among a number of other non-college employers like US Bank, Aurora Health Care, General Electric, 3M, etc.

It's time to accept the fact that they're here, they're queer, and they deserve access to the same employment benefits as the rest of us.

Want to Know How Much I Make?

All you need to do is visit this site on any UW System computer, request a disk with the info from any UW campus, or call the UW-Milwaukee HR Department at 414-229-4463.

Evidently for some legislative Republicans, that amounts to keeping it a secret.

Since no other public employee salary information at any level in Wisconsin is that accessible, it seems to me GOPers like Suder are just about taking any opportunity they can get to publicly throw some crap -- even an eye-rolling amount -- at the UW System.

Campus Merger or Bust

I can understand why Waukesha County exec Dan Vrakas is upset that the UWM and UW-Waukesha merger idea is losing steam. After all, if the two merge, the state will assume the entire cost, relieving Vrakas of the operations bill along with facility debt payments that the county currently pays for UW-Waukesha.

But it's a little more curious to see new Assembly Colleges and Universities chairperson Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) raising a stink over the sinking of the merger idea.

"There's got to be other information available," Nass exclaimed in response to a UW System report that showed a full campus merger would cost twice as much as the university center idea.

Maybe the WPRI is available. (Side-Note: Do you suppose the GOP has a special signal and red phone just like the Gotham City Police Department for these occasions?)

But, the fact is, there just isn't going to be a way to crunch the numbers so that transforming a 2-year campus into a 4-year campus -- whether or not it happens under the guise of a merger -- is cheaper than simply creating upper division instructional capabilities at UW-Waukesha, which is essentially the university center option.

Under the university center option, the state would assume the cost of upper-division and graduate programming, which includes the construction and maintenance of any new buildings used by the university center, but Waukesha County would continue to pick up the full facilities tab for existing infrastructure. That alone is a huge cost difference between the university center and merger options.

Add to that the fact that instituting a full 4-year campus and graduate school would involve hiring more full-time professors -- currently the UW Colleges rely heavily on part-time instructors -- along with developing a research and technology presence and bringing on board administrative staff to provide resources for students as they navigate through their programs and beyond.

In short, it's pretty obvious why the merger cost is more than the university center option. And it really isn't even all that close.

But there's more to the story for Nass. Last August he wrote an op-ed published at WisOpinion in which he laid out his vision for the UW System. One of the sections involved a proposal to merge all of the UW Colleges campuses with the Wisconsin Technical College System. Setting aside the problems involved in merging two major entities with clearly different missions, there seems to be inherent in the proposal a belief that mergers always equal less cost.

And insomuch that mergers accompany downsizing or even, to a lesser extent, just the maintenance of existing services, this belief in the cost saving potential of consolidation can be accurate. But there are few people -- and even fewer businesses -- who are interested in downsizing the public postsecondary options in the state; indeed, all of the options involving UWM and UW-Waukesha entail expansion, not merely consolidation.

I don't want to jump to any firm conclusions about Nass' reasoning for trying to get around the findings of a sound study, but the belief that you can always get more from less seems to be a logical culprit. To be sure, some of Nass' GOP colleagues on the Assembly Colleges and Universites Committee have expressed that exact belief regarding the merger idea.

State Rep. Rich Zipperer (R-Pewaukee) has said that not only should expanding UW-Waukesha into a 4-year campus not cost more than establishing a university center there, it should actually save the state money on the whole.

This isn't to say that important efficiencies can't be realized within an institution. In my job at UWM, in fact, I'm working on a number of projects aimed at doing more -- or at least as much -- administratively with less through automating previously manual processes.

But when you're talking about the entirety of an institution that's as service-centered and geographically-fixed as a university campus, there's just no way to do more at the same level of quality on less, and that goes for private institutions as well as public.

If proponents of the merger idea want to continue to push for it, that's certainly fine. I really don't have a strong opinion on it either way (my inclination is to start with the university center and work from there if more is needed). But they need to accept the fact that a full merger is among the most expensive options, not the least.