Tag Archives: Finances

5/15/2010: Two news reports about Pres Lariviere’s reform plan. Ted Sickinger of the Oregonian’s story could not be much more negative, ending on this note:

But neither sitting state Treasurer Ted Wheeler nor his Democratic opponent in Tuesday’s election, Sen. Rick Metsger, D-Welches, appear supportive of using the state’s borrowing capacity to fund stock market speculation.

“I am interested in ideas to create stable funding for higher education, but I am skeptical of using long-term debt to cover operating expenses,” Wheeler said Friday. “Debt is more appropriate for funding capital projects.”

Some call it speculation, some call it investment:

“It’s a trade-off of risk,” said John Chalmers, a UO finance professor who worked on the plan. “We’re trading political risk for investment risk, and we can plan for investment risk. That’s what endowments do.”

Greg Bolt in the RG focuses on the political aspects:

And, as challenging as the financing side of the proposal is, it is the governance issues that could prove the hardest sell in Salem. The plan takes away both the Legislature’s ability to control the university by holding the purse strings and its direct authority over tuition and most other aspects of university management, giving that instead to an appointed board of trustees.

Legislators have never shown much appetite for surrendering those powers. For at least the past five legislative sessions, the Oregon University System has proposed major changes in its relationship with the state that were less comprehensive than what is in the UO’s current proposal, and few ever were approved.

Well this has certainly succeeded in making everyone’s agenda clear – we’ll see what happens next.  The white paper is at the official UO website here, there are a few comments there already.

1/15/2010: This David Steves RG story is the most honest I’ve seen yet on what’s going on with state spending:

Question: What’s really going on with the state budget? One side says politicians in Salem behind the tax increase just increased state spending by $4.7 billion. The other side says the budget was cut by $2 billion. Who is right?

Answer: They’re both right. Tax critics are citing the state’s “all funds” budget, which grew from $51.2 billion in 2007-09 to $55.9 billion in 2009-11, a 9 percent increase. The “general fund” is the budget within this budget that tax-increase supporters are focusing on. It was $15.1 billion for 2007-09, until the recession hit. It went down in 2009-11 to $14.2 billion.

That’s not a $2 billion cut, you say? That’s right. The $2 billion figure cited by Democratic leaders is the difference between the $14.2 billion in approved spending and the $16.2 billion estimate of what it would have cost to keep up with growing case­loads, enrollment, medical inflation and previously approved government expansions.

Question: Why did the state’s general-fund budget get smaller when its overall spending increased?

Answer: Let’s look at the general-fund budget. Income taxes from households and corporations, plus lottery money, make up nearly all the general fund. The recession hammered those tax collections.

More than 130,000 Oregonians lost their jobs and investment income and corporate profits tanked. The amount of corporate and personal income tax revenue lawmakers could count on when they crafted the 2009-11 budget had fallen by $1.4 billion from what had been expected two years earlier.

Now, let’s consider the state’s all-funds budget. The general fund makes up just under a quarter of it. The rest comes from taxes and fees outside the general fund, as well as federal dollars.

The Legislature’s $733 million in higher taxes for the general fund through measures 66 and 67 are front and center now. But the state raised other revenue that doesn’t flow into the general fund, thereby boosting the all-funds budget. For example, the state increased the gas tax and DMV fees — a $568 million jump — for highway and bridge work. Plus, the state imposed $500 million in new taxes on hospitals and insurance premiums to increase health care for poor families.

In addition are hundreds of millions of dollars of fees, such as university tuition, that the state raised to offset dwindling income-tax revenues.

12/29/2009: The Budget and Resource Planning people have begun posting pretty detailed expenditure reports at http://brp.uoregon.edu/analysis_fmr

Apparently Brad Shelton, Kelly Wolf and Laura Hubbard are the people to thank for this big step forward for financial transparency.

12/21/2007: Oregon State economist William Jaeger has produced an interesting report on Oregon’s taxes, demonstrating that they are well below the national average. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Also interesting is this study on happiness by state (of residence, not of mind). Oregon is #30.

11/5/2009: From CJ Ciaramella in the Emerald:

What was supposed to be a one-time surcharge tacked onto last spring term’s tuition has now become a permanent increase to University tuition, and it’s costing students more than they bargained for. The surcharge, $150 for residents and $350 for non-residents, was approved by the State Board of Higher Education as a one-time emergency measure in March, but this fall the University requested the surcharge be made a permanent part of the tuition base, which the Board approved. “We were granted permission to keep the increase and add additionally onto it,” University Vice President of Finance and Administration Frances Dyke said. …

Student leaders, who were sold on the surcharge as a one-time occurrence, as well as a buy-down of the student incidental fee to offset the charge, are unhappy with the news. “This information was communicated in a way that didn’t seem to meet the goals of transparency that the administration says it holds,” ASUO President Emma Kallaway said. “Bottom line: We’re frustrated and seeking more information to better serve students.”

Good luck with that transparency thing.

10/31/2009: Verbatim from Jack Bog’s Blog:

Red flag goes up at OHSU

The new chief financial officer at OHSU has quit after just two weeks on the job. Apparently it has something to do with family issues, but given all the turnover in management on Pill Hill lately, the situation bears scrutiny. As Muddy Waters used to say, “that’s the stuff you gotta watch.” The most recent interim CFO can’t come back under PERS rules; he’s been gone for a couple of months already.

The announcement came on a Friday, no doubt timed so that it could be lost in the weekend, and of course the O‘s editors were sure to oblige on that score. We’ll come back to it on Monday.

How will these problems at OHSU affect Lariviere’s efforts to get the same independence from the legislature that OHSU has?