Testimony for the Joint House and Senate Ways & Means Committees
Subcommittees on Education
Proposed Budget for Fiscal Year 2004
March 10, 2003
Bridgewater State College

Chairman Flynn and members of the Committee, for the record my name is Patricia Markunas. I am the president of the Massachusetts State College Association. We represent the 2500 faculty and librarians at the nine state colleges. I am pleased that members of both legislative houses are represented here today. It signifies not only the seriousness of the fiscal crisis facing us but also the commitment that legislators have to solving it and supporting education in Massachusetts.

Members of the Committee, your historical support for our mission has never been more important than it is today. It is impossible to imagine a package of proposals more devastating to public higher education than the ones proposed by Governor Romney’s administration. The devastation encompasses three areas: financial support for the colleges, governance of the higher education system, and the working lives of higher education employees.

Governor Romney’s proposed $156 million cut to public higher education adds to the fiscal assault endured by the system over the past two years. Massachusetts already ranks near the bottom of the 50 states in spending on public higher education, as determined by a percentage of income or on a per capita basis. These cuts have resulted in dramatic increases in student fees and tuition, increased class sizes and decreased course availability, faculty and staff positions not being replaced, and libraries decimated in terms of their collections and services.

As if the proposed budget cuts were not devastating enough, Governor Romney has offered a reorganization plan for higher education that is so packed with self-contradictions that it deserves to collapse from its own weight. What governor who understands the importance of public higher education would propose to privatize the system’s “flagship” institution so that it will be unaffordable for the very citizens of the state it is named for? What governor who holds office in the state capital known as the Cradle of Liberty would attack the state’s merchant marine academy and its most successful graduates during a national security crisis and on the eve of possible international conflict? What governor who purports to want to streamline government would add seven regional councils, four boards of trustees and at least 128 seats to the state’s higher education bureaucracy?

And where are the supposed millions of dollars in savings in this plan? Merging institutions and renaming them costs money – it does not save it. Adding seven regional councils and four boards of trustees requires more offices, more staff members, more travel and meeting expenses, more red tape, and more money – not less money. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has spent millions of dollars over the past decade to effect the recommendations of the 1989 Saxon Report, integrating the administrative functions of the University, the state college system and the community college system as separate segments. How many millions of dollars will it cost – not save, cost -- to break up these systems and integrate them regionally? Is it any wonder that the Bain Capital Report is not yet available for anyone’s public scrutiny?

At the February 27th meeting of the Board of Higher Education, Secretary of Education designate Peter Nessen was asked, by the student representative to the BHE, what services to students would be improved by any – any – of the proposals he had made? Secretary Nessen could not name a single one. As in the fable we remember from childhood, the youngest member of the Board was the person who pointed out that, in fact, this Emperor has no clothes. There are no savings and no benefits in these proposals because their primary purpose is the personal and political attack on the president of the University, among other targets.

The third area of devastation is on the employees of the system themselves. As the MSCA President, I will always be grateful to you for the legislative funding of our long-overdue collective bargaining agreement last year. However, the unfunded contracts of my higher education colleagues are a painful reminder of an obligation that, despite the fiscal crisis, must be fulfilled. The proposed increases in state employee health insurance premiums are unconscionable and must be rejected. The state employee pension system, which continued to function as intended even during the Great Depression, should be preserved and strengthened.

And the Governor’s attacks on the collective bargaining law must be rejected as well. Hundreds, if not thousands, of unionized employees would lose basic contractual rights. Faculty members, who issue grades to hundreds of students each system, must have contractual protections against unfair discipline and dismissal. We must be able to bargain over seniority, longevity, staffing levels and professional training to insure a quality education for our students. Our contract prevents patronage and provides a vehicle for a healthy working relationship between our members and the college presidents and trustees.

Members of the Committee, you must maintain the Commonwealth’s investment in its system of public higher education – a system that educates the majority of Massachusetts students who attend college, a system whose graduates remain in Massachusetts to work here, spend money here, and pay taxes here. You must consider restoring revenues to the levels that are needed to maintain vital state services. You must stand up for the right of the citizens of Massachusetts to have access to a diverse, high quality and affordable system of public higher education. And you must protect the right of working people and their families to have affordable health insurance and the rights bestowed by the state’s collective bargaining law.

Thank you for your attention this morning.

Patricia V. Markunas
President, Massachusetts State College Association
Professor of Psychology, Salem State College