VCU expects smooth ride toward General Assembly funding

When recently inaugurated Gov. Timothy M. Kaine delivered his State of the Commonwealth address to the General Assembly on Monday, he devoted more than a third of his speech to transportation – and just 2 percent to higher education.

So should Virginia Commonwealth University worry that universities will be left in the dust as Virginia officials craft a state budget this legislative session?

No, says Don Gehring, VCU’s vice president of government relations and health policy. “While we may not be the number one priority, we will still be getting due consideration,” he said.

VCU officials are optimistic that they’ll get a fair share of the state budget that legislators will approve this spring for the 2006-07 and 2007-08 fiscal years. Much of the university’s confidence in future appropriations comes from the “base adequacy model” – a formula that the General Assembly uses for funding universities.

The funding formula helps legislators take into account such factors as credit hours, enrollment growth and complexity of programs. Gehring said VCU profits greatly from this concept.

VCU already receives about $175 million a year from the state’s general fund, the part of the state budget that goes toward education, health care and other services. Thanks to the base adequacy funding formula, the university expects to receive an additional $16.5 million each year of the biennium.

“What I think we’ve seen in the last few years is a real effort to make up for lost time and the really difficult economic times that we had,” he said. “I’m really not worried that they’re going to cut funding or stop funding on the base adequacy side.”

In fact, VCU would get a bigger increase in funding than any state university other than George Mason University, under the budget recommendations announced in December by Kaine’s predecessor, Gov. Mark R. Warner.

Retaining its share of base adequacy funding in the state budget is at the top of VCU’s legislative wish list. Then comes the construction of two research facilities.

One project is a 20,000-square-foot expansion of the 60,000-square-foot Massey Cancer Center at 401 College St. Nearby, VCU wants to build another research facility – Medical Sciences Building II. This 125,000-square-foot, eight-story building will replace the current Nursing Education Building on Broad Street.

Warner’s budget provides nearly $18 million for construction of Medical Sciences Building II. Warner previously approved $6 million in state funding to support the Massey Cancer Center addition.

“Both Medical Sciences II and the Massey Cancer Center addition have a very good chance of being fully funded and getting through the General Assembly without any major difficulties,” Gehring said.

To complete the projects, VCU would need not just what Warner proposed but about $16 million more. Getting that money may hinge on educating legislators about the value of VCU’s research.

“They’ll realize that they’ll get a real return on their investment,” Gehring said, “and I think that’s something that’s very important to the General Assembly, especially in recent years.”

Gehring pointed to the 900 full-time equivalent jobs VCU’s research enterprise generates and their $45 million payroll as evidence of quantifiable benefits for the commonwealth. These figures multiplied across researchers at other state universities including Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Old Dominion University and James Madison University, Gehring emphasized, result in hundreds of millions of payroll dollars produced by research in Virginia.

Essentially, Gehring and other university administrators are working to make sure legislators caught an understated point Kaine made in Monday’s speech to a joint meeting of the House and Senate. “Our network of community colleges, four-year colleges and universities also plays a vital role in both our education system and our economic prosperity,” Kaine said.

In his address, Kaine echoed a proposal that Warner had made in his State of the Commonwealth speech the previous week: that Virginia create a college in Martinsville, in the southern part of the state.

Although details are unclear, this institution is not expected to compete with VCU and other universities for funding. Instead, after it opens in 2007, it will likely be a center for collaboration between researchers from state institutions.

The creation of the Martinsville institution, Gehring suggested, reflects Virginia’s need to bolster its health sciences workforce.

“I think that we will be a participant in that process,” Gehring said. “I think that generally for Virginia, we will help create a lot more jobs – not just in Southside Virginia but hopefully throughout the commonwealth.”

The higher education research initiative in Warner’s proposed budget includes a number of items that will bring VCU closer to creating health sciences jobs and valuable research.

One of the proposed items would bring in $12.5 million of state funds for research in the areas of cancer, neurological and metabolic diseases. Another $4.2 million would be allocated between VCU and University of Virginia for regenerative medicine – or “stem cell” – research.

Gehring and other VCU administrators will try to convince legislators that the university deserves all the funds in the proposed budget. But the biggest help can often come from student and faculty involvement, Gehring said.

“It’s great for someone like me to go down to the General Assembly. But it really has a lot more impact when faculty or students go down to the General Assembly.”