In early
May, Mayor Giuliani proposed a budget that would cut city support
for City University by $7.2 million. The mayor also wants to
impose new conditions on the aid, requiring privatization of
remedial education for 1,000 students and the hiring of an outside
contractor “to independently review the testing process.”
Meanwhile
in Albany, state budget talks were at a standstill, with a final
deal not expected until August.
City
funding goes principally to CUNY’s community colleges, and the
mayor’s cuts “would be a devastating blow,” said Hannalyn
Wilkens, chair of the Communication Skills Department at LaGuardia
Community College. “We’ve already been cut to the bone.
Giuliani’s budget is putting the very mission of the community
colleges at risk.” While scaling back community college support,
the mayor’s budget calls for doubling enrollment in CUNY’s new
Honors College program, an expansion to be paid for by cuts in
central administration.
As for the
proposal to contract out 1,000 remediation slots, Wilkens said,
“Who says private is better? Why should public funds be spent
for private gain?” Though CUNY’s remedial programs have been
disparaged by politicians and the press, independent reports
commissioned—and then shelved—by the Board of Trustees found
that they have been successful over the past two decades. “This
would be one more case where the mayor siphoned off taxpayers’
money to his cronies,” commented Richard Hanley, professor of
English at NYC Tech. It is unclear whether this requirement could
be carried out: last year CUNY put out an RFP for some
privatization of remediation, but found no qualified vendors.
Giuliani’s
budget argues that private “review” of CUNY’s testing
policies is needed “to ensure that the implementation of higher
standards is not diluted by lowering passing scores.” This
echoes the political attack on CUNY over its ACT reading test by
the mayor and Board of Trustees chair Herman Badillo, which made
headlines in March. CUNY has already announced that it will hire
the RAND corporation to do a review of the ACT.
The PSC is
working to restore the funds that Giuliani wants to cut and
eliminate these conditions. The union is pressing the City Council
to boost support for CUNY by an additional $20.6 million, and on
May 24 the PSC will testify before the council’s committee on
higher education. But in city budget negotiations, the deck is
stacked in favor of the mayor: the council can only get its way on
those items which it makes a real priority. PSC Secretary Cecelia
McCall urged union members in New York City to contact their
councilperson immediately. “We need an increase for CUNY, not
cuts and conditions,” said McCall.
Meanwhile
in Albany, there has been little action one way or another. “It
looks like there will be no agreement on the state budget until
August, or possibly even September,” said McCall. The problem,
she explained, is that the Assembly, State Senate and the Governor
are far apart on their estimates of future state revenue, and all
sides are playing a waiting game. “There are no talks going on
among the three about the revenue figure,” said McCall.
“They’re each hoping that new economic data will agree more
with their own predictions, and strengthen their hand in those
discussions.”
Until
there is agreement on just how much money will be available,
serious bargaining on how to spend it cannot begin.
As long as the budget is unresolved, the legislature keeps
the machinery of government moving with continuing resolutions,
maintaining spending at last year’s levels. Chancellor Matthew
Goldstein has told the PSC that if the budget is further delayed,
CUNY will allocate employment lines on the basis of Governor
Pataki’s essentially steady-state budget request. This would
allow colleges to plan for the fall, though they could not take
advantage of whatever increases they may eventually get above the
governor’s proposal.
The
Assembly’s proposed budget for CUNY represented some real
progress, calling for an increase of more than $40 million above
the Governor’s budget proposal. But how much of this will be
part of the final deal is very much up in the air. Michael Krasner,
chair of the PSC’s Political Action Committee, urged members to
call their own State Senator and impress on them that the Assembly
budget is just a start on what CUNY needs to do its job. “A
flurry of calls to Republican State Senators will make a huge
difference,” he said.
“The key
senators include Serphin Maltese and Frank Padavan in Queens, Guy
Velella in the Bronx, John Marchi on Staten Island and Nicholas
Spano in Westchester,“ said Krasner. On Long Island, he cited
Michael Balboni, Dean Skelos, Charles Fuschillo, and Carl
Marcellino in Nassau County, and Kenneth LaValle in Suffolk. If
you live in these districts, said Krasner, a call from you is of
special value.
“We’ve
made a good start in Albany,” said McCall. “We need to make
sure that this
progress is not undone.”