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OLYMPIA -- Retired school teacher Laurel Piippo spent two days at the state Capitol this week explaining to lawmakers why she became a "cranky taxpayer" over salaries paid to top university officials, and why they should do something about it.
Piippo, 82, of Richland, marched through marble hallways in comfortable tennis shoes, and knocked on the doors of every member of the House Higher Education Committee to ask them to pass a bill making spending at public universities more transparent.
But her pleas fell mostly on deaf ears, and House Bill 2859, sponsored by Rep. Larry Haler, R-Richland, appeared to have died in the committee on Tuesday.
Haler said there wasn't enough support among Democrats on the committee for the bill to be passed along to a full vote by the House.
The bill would have required the state's Higher Education Coordinating Board to collect various data from public universities and post it online in a user-friendly format.
Among the data that would be included in this "dashboard" website would be the cost of instruction; institutional funding by source; average state funding allocation per resident undergraduate student; average salary and benefits for full-time faculty and staff; student-to-faculty ratio; percentage of first-time, full-time freshmen who earn a degree within four, five or six years; students' employment rate within three quarters of graduation; and salary and benefit information for the top 10 highest compensated university employees.
The bill also would have prevented public universities from using state money to pay bonuses and other non-salary compensation to university executives.
The latter part was inspired by the ruckus Piippo raised over a $245,000 annual salary being paid to a former administrator, now a history professor, at Washington State University Tri-Cities.
Former Washington State University Provost Steven Hoch left his position as provost less than two months into his tenure after an altercation with another administrator that ended in a hallway shoving match.
But his contract allowed him to stay on as tenured faculty at 82 percent of his $300,000 provost's salary. He then was assigned to WSU's Richland campus.
For more than a year, Piippo has blasted e-mails and letters to lawmakers, the Herald and anyone else who would listen, decrying what she saw as wasteful spending on Hoch's salary and a $500,000 retention bonus for WSU President Elson S. Floyd.
She objects to taxpayer money being used for what she believes are excessive administrator salaries and bonuses.
"Higher-level administrators have worked themselves into a wonderful financial position where they breathe dollars while the rest of us pay them," Piippo said.
But she also doesn't want to see students bearing the brunt of administrative costs by paying higher tuition.
Students at Washington's public universities -- including WSU -- are experiencing two consecutive years of 14 percent tuition increases approved by the Legislature in 2009 after lawmakers cut hundreds of millions of dollars from higher education funding.
The idea was to raise financial aid to make sure low- and middle-class students still would be able to attend college, but now financial aid is in danger of being slashed because of a $2.6 billion state budget deficit.
Haler said the ratio of state funding to tuition dollars in university budgets has been turned upside-down, with tuition now making up about 55 percent of the cost of instruction. He thinks an ideal portion is more like 40 percent.
And while some university presidents, including Floyd, have taken pay cuts or donated portions of their salaries back to the universities, Haler doesn't think that fixes the problem.
"That's peanuts compared to what we've done to students with tuition," he said.
He said the state needs to address the imbalance in higher education funding, but also needs to hold universities accountable for how they spend money.
And he "adamantly opposes" any plans to give university regents the ability to set their own tuition rather than having the amount of increases determined by the Legislature.
Bills giving regents more tuition-setting leeway were introduced in the House and Senate this year, but have not been passed by their respective committees.
"I'm going to fight that bill tooth and nail if it comes to the House floor," Haler said.
Although Haler's bill won't pass this year, he plans to keep working on it through the interim and bring back a new proposal in partnership with a couple of Democratic colleagues in 2011.
"I want to make sure we get some kind of accountability," he said.
Larry Ganders, Floyd's assistant for governmental affairs in Olympia, said WSU is willing to work with Haler on his bill, but university officials want more information about what Haler has in mind and what format data collection and publishing might take.
"We are willing to discuss it," Ganders said.
-- Michelle Dupler: 360-753-0862; mdupler@tricityherald.com
