Eastern plays waiting game with 2015-17 budget

When you deal in the kind of money Eastern Washington University does with its biennial budget, and with a state legislature that has a hard time agreeing, it’s good to be flexible

At one time that would have meant an old fashion pencil with a big eraser and a thick legal pad. Now, a well-built spreadsheet can try to do the new calculations necessary when the budget numbers change, as they are likely to.

The Eastern Washington University board of trustees got to peer info the still foggy future at their May 14 meeting when Mary Voves, vice president for business and finance at EWU, delivered a lengthy PowerPoint presentation on the first reading of both the 2015-17 operating and capital budgets.

Voves warned the trustees that there could still be significant reductions in state support. But that will not be determined until the Legislature adjourns.

And that date is anyone’s guess as the lawmakers at Capitol Hill in Olympia already finished a 105-day regular session, a 30-day special session and now a special second session is trying to arrive at a compromise.

By law they must deliver a budget to Gov. Jay Inslee for his signature by July 1.

With nearly 60-pages of charts and graphs in hand, Voves outlined the next two years of operations at EWU.

Even preliminary in nature, she termed it, “A challenging budget environment,” as the school has had to endure a net reduction in state funding of 37 percent since the 2009-11 biennium.

Total state appropriations funding in 2009-11 was $124.8 million but has fallen drastically in the 2013-15 biennium to $78.76 million.

The most recently completed budget period, 2013-15, showed flat enrollment growth but revenue that looks stable. In an effort to change that there is a new focus in attracting international students to EWU.

Eastern projects an enrollment of 10,408 with 8,854 of those resident undergraduate students over the next two years.

The budget process began in the fall of 2014 and goes through a series of steps with surveys and hearings and was presented to EWU President Dr. Mary Cullinan in April 2015 and to the trustees at its May meeting. A second reading will take place in June.

But in essence it really starts much earlier. “We are always working on six year budgeting at any given time,” Voves told the board.

The House budget provides Eastern $92.2 million in operational money for the 2015-17 biennium while the Senate is slightly lower at $89 million. “Neither budget is great but tolerable,” Voves said.

“The House proposal looks good to us,” she said.

David Buri, the director of government relations at EWU joined Voves in the presentation and told the trustees, “There are things we like about both (budget proposals) and things we have concerns about both.”

As far as a capital budget, funds used for new construction on campus, “We were hoping it would be more robust,” Voves said.

Eastern has long proposed construction of a new science building on campus, but now that project is being reexamined to also include chemistry. There appears, however, to not be money for the project at this point.

“We were really disappointed in the capital budget,” Buri said.

Paul Delaney can be reached at pdelaney@cheneyfreepress.com.