HARTFORD, Conn. — Gov. Ned Lamont is already facing backlash for his new budget, introduced Wednesday.
The University of Connecticut (UConn) and other state colleges are speaking out, planning walk-outs and even threatening to end sports deals in protest of the budget.
“We're not a corporation asking for a tax break,” said Mason Holland, UConn’s student body president. “We're not some large business that made a mistake and now we're asking for the state's help in fixing it. We are Connecticut's future.”
UConn President Radenka Maric said if enacted, the governor’s proposed budget would leave the school nearly $160 million short next year.
This budget technically raises base appropriations for UConn by about $23 million dollars, but overall funding to higher education institutions would shrink, which schools said they can’t sustain.
“We've seen that you know, certain things have not been in the best financial place and they've been slipping for a while,” Holland said.
Maric released a letter that said if the university tried to cover just the Storrs-campus portion of these budget shortfalls, it would need to raise tuition by $3,000 per student.
“The university and the Board of Trustees are very concerned about affordability and would like to keep any tuition increases as modest as possible,” she wrote.
“I think the scariest thing is we don't know exactly what this can affect,” added Holland.
The Lamont administration argues it’s attempting to transition funding to a more sustainable place, as temporary, pandemic-era American Rescue Plan Act dollars expire.
“We've given them additional ARPA in this budget for two more years on top of the baseline appropriation, that we hope will taper them down, but they should not have built that into their base,” said Jeffrey Beckham, secretary of the Office of Policy Management. “They should not use that for ongoing programs.”
Some universities are planning to potentially retaliate.
UConn’s school paper reported Maric threatened to push back by pulling the university’s current deal with the XL Center in Hartford.
“We play at the XL Center, and we pay to play there, so the money that we generate there doesn’t go to us and athletics, it goes to Connecticut… When I go and talk to owners of the restaurants, hotels and the parking lots, they say that [their] business only spikes when UConn is playing in Hartford, and that’s when they generate revenue,” Maric said. “So, I was telling the governor, if there is a cut that I have to do, I’m not going to put the cuts on academic quality, I will do the cuts and make the decision to pull out of the XL.”
Speaker of the House Matt Ritter shut this down Wednesday morning, saying he spoke with UConn’s athletic director and the school reiterated its commitment to play at the XL Center, but one state lawmaker said cutting this contract might not be the worst idea.
“It is smart that if we’re going to make reductions that we should try to preserve the academic programming,” said Rep. Gregg Haddad, (D-Mansfield) co-chair of the Higher Education and Employment Advancement Committee.
“I don’t know that we’ll go so far as to not play UConn games in Hartford anymore,” he continued. “But they have a mission to educate folks in the state of Connecticut and that is the thing we rely on them first and foremost to do.”
Multiple lawmakers said they plan to provide more money for higher education in the legislature’s budget proposal, however, they’re unsure if they’ll get enough to fully close this funding gap.
UConn students are planning a walkout for Feb. 15.
Emma Wulfhorst is a political reporter for FOX61 News. She can be reached at ewulfhorst@fox61.com. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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