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Veto
of Tech College Tax Freeze Will Help Wisconsin Economy
Governor Doyle's
veto of the property tax freeze on technical college districts will help
the economic recovery of Wisconsin, according to Madison Area Technical
College (MATC). In signing the budget bill and vetoing the property tax
freeze, the Governor signaled the importance of MATC and the states other
15 technical colleges in rebuilding the state's economy. Leaders of the
state technical college system say the freeze would have been short-sighted.
"We took a hard look at what the potential freeze and millions of
dollars of cuts over the next several years would do to MATC," explains
MATC Chief Finance Officer Kevin Myren. "Given that our business
is to help students learn and prepare for careers, most of our expenses
pay for instructional and student support. So, in dealing with millions
of dollars in cuts, we would have been forced to make staff reductions
and layoffs resulting in reduced programs, classes and services for our
students," states Myren. He notes that MATC has earned and maintained
triple "A" bond ratings from institutional investors for several
years, and that a recent market study indicated 85% of residents in the
colleges district believe MATC offers good value to taxpayers.
Myren notes that one of the biggest attributes of the technical colleges
is its ability to respond to the immediate needs of unemployed workers
and to businesses, and this would have been significantly curtailed without
the veto. "MATC needs the flexibility to respond to local layoffs
so we can offer support and retraining options quickly to workers and
employers. Last week we worked with a plant in Ft. Atkinson scheduled
to close this fall to help more than 80 employees who will lose their
jobs. If MATC had not been able to respond to this need, where else would
these workers turn to find such accessible support and retraining?"
Myren states that MATC will continue to self-impose levy and budget constraints,
just as it was doing prior to any state budget talks this year. This past
fiscal year, these constraints included reallocations and reductions of
more than $3 million. Reallocations were made from retiring or departing
faculty salaries and supply funding to high-priority needs, such as expanding
nursing instruction, supporting new programs in plastics manufacturing
and computer information services and starting new services for underprepared
students. In addition, the colleges decision to aggressively repay its
Wisconsin Retirement System liability will continue to save several million
dollars in upcoming years.
Myren notes that the college administration also empowered our union-management
benefits committee to redesign our employee health insurance plan. The
committees work, which shifted some costs to our employees, will save
the college about $1.4 million compared to last year. The plan redesign
will reap significant and continued lower expenses in the future compared
to the projected skyrocketing costs of our former plan.
"Our ability to self-impose levy and budget restriction indicates
that another levy limit, on top of the 1.5 mill rate limit imposed by
the state, is not necessary," Myren adds.
He notes that these reductions in programs and staff would have come at
a time when as the colleges growing enrollments demonstrate — MATC's
services never have been more in demand. Students likely to have been
most affected by drastic cuts are those already on waiting lists and currently,
about 1,700 students are waiting for seats to open up in more than 20
programs.
More than half of MATCs programs with current waiting lists are in the
health field, including nursing, radiography and clinical lab technician.
Others include fire protection, auto technician, graphic design, architectural
technology and barber/cosmetology. "These individuals have been very
patient but if the property tax freeze had not been vetoed, their paths
to a new career may have been frozen, too," explains Myren.
"In addition, the cascading effect is that businesses would have
experienced more difficulty in filling high-demand positions with new
graduates and, in turn, businesses would find it more difficult to meet
customer needs. Their sales would decrease, leading to further erosion
of our economy. And, as consumers, each of us may have experienced problems
in getting medical treatment, fire emergency calls responded to, our cars
repaired or even a good haircut."
MATC is one of the largest of the Wisconsin Technical College Systems
16 colleges. It provides a comprehensive curriculum of technical, liberal
arts and science, adult basic education and life enrichment studies and
activities, and customized employee training. MATC serves approximately
50,000 individuals each year.
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Last
Modified:
July 16, 2003
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