Senators ask Swift to spare UMass, colleges

The following letter, signed by 38 of the 40 members of the State Senate, was sent July 19 to Acting Gov. Jane Swift.

e are writing to you today to enlist your continuing support for public higher education here in Massachusetts. The most recent round of revenue projections has come as an enormous disappointment to all of us and has clearly demanded a reexamination of budget matters. While we recognize the difficult choices confronting you as you work to exercise your own constitutional repsonsibilities, we urge you to maintain a foundation level of funding for the public higher education system that has been up over the past decade.

     After several rounds of legislative and administrative cuts, the public higher education system has a limited capacity to endure another round of large budget cuts.

     Appropriations at the levels contained in your most recent budget proposal would severely compromise all of our institutions of public higher education. In the case of the University of Massachusetts, the $11.5 million reduction from FY02 spending that is proposed in the budget before you will be made even worse by the need to absorb an additional $37 million in costs to fund the second year of a collective bargaining agreement. If you were to use your veto authority to return to the $432 million recommended in your most recent budget proposal, the University would be expected to absorb that additional $37 million in costs with a state appropriation that will be $51 million less than it was two years ago.

     Given the likely passage of a $1.1 billion in new taxes since your most recent budget proposal, we are hopeful that you will be able to spare public higher education from these types of drastic and disproportionate cuts. Given the seriousness of our fiscal condition, we fully recognize the need to reduce overall state spending. We would encourage you, however, to balance that reduction carefully over the entire breadth of state government, and not use your veto authority to unduly burden this one area of state government, as was done during the fiscal crisis of the late 1980s. Thank you for your continuing interest and support for public education here in the Commonwealth.