College students get caught in partisan crossfire

DES MOINES – Student leaders at Iowa's regent universities got caught in the crossfire of a politically charged budget battle Monday, with one GOP senator telling them to go home because they were being used as props in a Democratic “propaganda” effort to leverage more state spending.

“This is political theater,” Sen. Shawn Hamerlinck, R-Dixon, told five student leaders from the University of Iowa, the University of Northern Iowa and Iowa State University who testified at a legislative hearing, “leave the circus to us.”

Monday's “open budget hearing” on education issues came as the split-control Legislature attempts to resolve budget differences before the new fiscal year begins July 1. Gov. Terry Branstad and GOP legislators have set a $5.99 billion limit of state spending for next fiscal year that they say provides a responsible and sustainable funding level while Democrats, who hold a 26-24 majority in the Senate, are pushing for more spending – especially for education – before they will agree to adjourn the 2011 overtime session.

Hamerlinck thanked the student speakers who participated in the first day of Senate Democratic budget hearings that focused on preschool, K-12, community college and state university funding. However, he told them they would be better served focusing on their individual situations back home rather than worrying about the politicking currently going on at the Statehouse.

Sen. Herman Quirmbach, D-Ames, chairman of the Senate Education Committee and a member of the hearing panel, called Hamerlinck's comments “incredibly insulting” and the worst he'd heard since a former senator referred to state employees as “bottom feeders” during a past Senate floor debate.

“I think Sen. Hamerlinck's comments were disrespectful, insulting and completely inappropriate,” said Quirmbach, who noted that he did not raise objections during the hearing because “I think I was too shocked to respond to them.”

During their presentation, university students told of growing debt loads, “wildly” rising tuitions and other costs, strained resources and declining quality at regent institutions that have been repeatedly subject to state budget cuts.

“I'm learning just how many flavors Ramen Noodles come in,” said Spencer Walrath, UNI student government president, in discussing the impact that state budget cuts have had on college students.

Lyndsay Harshman, an outgoing past student leader who recently graduated as a doctor who will begin her residency in the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics pediatrics department, said education cuts are hurting the state's in unseen ways because Iowans who are earning college degrees but carrying heavy debt loads are being forced to seek better-paying opportunities outside of the state – a cycle that “drives the brain drain.”

Harshman shrugged off Hamerlinck's comments after the meeting, saying she talked to him briefly and told him she is “about as conservative as it gets on many issues” but she staunchly believes that education is one of Iowa's greatest assets and worthy of adequate support from elected officials.

“If they choose to be dismissive, that is unfortunate for their constituents,” she said. As far as being referred to as a prop in Democrats' political theater, Harshman said: “I've been called worse by other people. It's probably not the worst thing I'll ever be called in my life.”

David Miles, president of the state Board of Regents, testified that Iowa's public universities contribute up to $9 billion annually to Iowa's economy and that each dollar invested at regent universities returns $15.81 to the state. However, he said state universities are under growing pressure due to significant cuts in state funding that have shifted the cost burden to students and their families in recent years while speaking in support of a status-quo appropriation for fiscal 2012 versus the $41 million cuts that majority House Republicans have proposed for regent funding in the omnibus budget bill slated for debate by the full House on Tuesday.

Miles conceded that “I don't know how many minds can be changed” now that the session has spilled into June, but he said he did not want to pass up an opportunity “to put our great students” in front of lawmakers to press their case and to do so in their own words. He said he was disappointed by the response they got at the close of the hearing.

“I think that is reflective of what is a highly charged partisan environment right now and I can understand that frustration, but I was disappointed when he moved from expressing that frustration to suggesting that they go home because they have a valid point of view. No one is living this like they are,” Miles said. “It's very disappointing for anyone to suggest that they don't have an equal seat at the table on these decisions.”

During his weekly news conference, Branstad said “it's a little late” for Senate Democrats to be holding a round of budget hearings when they should be crafting a counter offer that can get stalled budget talks moving as the threat of a July 1 government shutdown continues to loom. “It's time to get serious,” he said before embarking on a 43-city tour aimed at garnering public support for the GOP approach.

During afternoon testimony at the Senate hearing, Des Moines school board member Dick Murphy said school districts have cut spending “fat” and have done something this year that the Legislature hasn't – passed certified budgets. But he said those spending plans will be thrown into havoc if districts are forced to borrow money to meet their contractual obligations if the state begins fiscal 2012 without a budget and funds only those state government areas that are deemed essential.

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