Bulger says state leaders should consider tax hike

by Sarah R. Buchholz, Chronicle staff

alling the current state budget woes a "stubborn fiscal crisis," President William M. Bulger told faculty last week that he hopes Gov. Mitt Romney will consider raising taxes to make up some of the state's financial shortfall.

     Speaking at the Feb. 13 Faculty Senate meeting, Bulger said the Amherst campus is poised to be among the finest universities in the country if it is sufficiently funded. But sufficient funding has been hard to come by with a systemwide cut of $47 million in state revenues in the last two years, he said. Raising taxes, Bulger said, would allow Romney and the Legislature to avoid some of the "more Draconian results" of insufficient revenue to run the state.

      "You can't run a government without taxes," Bulger said.

      Romney, who took office in January, has declared he will not raise taxes to make up the commonwealth's budget shortfall.

      Bulger said that keeping the "enormous talent" in faculty and staff on the system's campuses is paramount to the success of the University.

      "Our No. 1 priority is minimizing layoffs," he said.

      The University is requesting $568.7 million from the state in fiscal year 2004, a $123 million increase over this year's budget, which includes $118.5 million for financing the unfunded employee contracts of the past two years.

      "We appreciate and are grateful for the efforts of President Bulger to work with the unions ... to meet us halfway," said Ron Story, president of the Massachusetts Society of Professors. "We understand that the big fight is about the budget and we want to do what we can [to help]."

     Story said faculty are scheduling a teach-in and letter-writing campaign for the second week of March.

     Bulger also discussed acquiring monies from other sources, citing a recent conversation he had with U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy about securing federal funding to support engineering research.