Published April 14, 2010 One Tri-City college campus appears to have dodged a budgetary bullet while another prepares for another round of painful cuts.<\/P> Washington State University officials said Tuesday that they’re not asking the Tri-City regional campus to make any cuts as it figures out how to slash $13.5 million from its overall operating budget.<\/P> Joan King, WSU executive director of planning and budget in Pullman, said the four-campus university system would try to make up the deficit through voluntary retirements and holding open vacant positions as people leave. <\/P> “We will hold the budget cuts centrally,” King said. “There are no specific cuts identified for the Tri-Cities.”<\/P> College and university officials have been on tenterhooks in recent months as the state Legislature struggled to adopt a supplemental budget balancing a $2.8 billion deficit for the remainder of the 2009-11 biennium.<\/P> WSU already took a $54 million, or more than 10 percent, cut to its state funding in 2009. The reduction led the university to eliminate nearly 200 jobs and hold open nearly 170 more.<\/P> Pasco-based Columbia Basin College lost $3.4 million, or about 13 percent, in state funding from its $23 million allocation.<\/P> That led the community college to eliminate its fire science day classes, and human services, paralegal and auto body programs.<\/P> CBC President Rich Cummins now is preparing for another $1.6 million in cuts under the budget adopted by the Legislature early Tuesday — the last day of a 30-day special session.<\/P> “This is going to be hard,” Cummins said. “I’ve read a lot of economic reports and have monthly meetings with (college economists). It’s going to be a long slog ahead.”<\/P> Both campuses have experienced record levels of growth over the last several years.<\/P> WSU Tri-Cities Chancellor Vicky Carwein said applications and admissions are both up compared to this time last year, while Cummins said CBC enrollment numbers remain high as displaced workers look for retraining and high school students take advantage of the Running Start program.<\/P> Cummins said he’ll do everything he can to make sure budget cuts at CBC don’t affect the quality of instruction.<\/P> “I wish higher ed could have been better protected,” Cummins said. “Once we turn off the education pipeline we begin turning off the future. At the same time, I understand the economy and understand business and know times are tough everywhere. … There is no way we’re going to allow this to weaken us as a college. It may make us smaller, but it won’t diminish us.” Published April 14, 2010By Michelle Dupler, Tri-City HeraldOne Tri-City college campus appears to have dodged a budgetary bullet while another prepares for another round of painful cuts.Washington State University officials said Tuesday that they’re not asking the Tri-City regional campus to make any cuts as it figures out how to slash $13.5 million from its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-528833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528833\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/SPAN>By Michelle Dupler, Tri-City Herald<\/P>
Additional news stories can be accessed online at the <\/EM>Tri-City Herald<\/EM><\/A>.<\/EM><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"