6/27/2011: Bill Graves of the Oregonian has a good story with some analysis. Saul Hubbard of the RG has some good quotes here. You can get a pdf of SB909 here, and of SB242 here. (In these pdf’s the bold parts are new law, the italic parts are deletions of old law.)
Comments?
All other things being equal, giving more autonomy to the OUS is a good thing. But all other things are patently not equal. SB 242 nets about six million for the system in the next biennium, but on the heels of a more than *one hundred million* dollar cut to the OUS budget just last week. So I don’t understand all the high-fiving in Salem over this. Plus, no one knows yet what the new alphabet soup of coordinating boards (the OEIB and the HECC) will accomplish, if anything, and it may be that they do more harm than good, especially if universities have to pick up where a collapsing K-12 system leaves off. “Aspirational” is, I believe, the current euphemism.
UO and Lariviere started something with the new partnership. Pernsteiner took the idea and ran with it, getting independence for the entire system with SB242.
Kitzhaber wants the universities to be independent, but he doesn’t want Pernsteiner in charge, so he put up SB909, which gives him control over everything.
Now we have the governor seizing control of a broken system, setting policy, and giving administrative control to the institutions.