Say Anything Blog

(Note I had the story up with a large error for about five minutes.  I had misunderstood the newscast and had thought that they were asking for twice as much.  After listening to it one more time I took this post down as soon as I could to correct it.  Sorry if it caused anyone any problems.)

This is incredible.  There’s a WDAZ story on the GF Herald’s website where they reported that the University of North Dakota is going to ask the state legislature for $180 million for the University and $45 million for the UND medical school. 

That means they’re demanding that they get $225 million from the state taxpayers.  If you go to the 2007-2009 Appropriations book (state budget) on page 2 you’ll see that last year they got $145,509,206 in general fund spending from the state.  So the new President is asking for an increase from state taxpayers of 50%.

But in the news story he makes a promise.  If he gets his state money doubled he’ll see to it that tuition only goes up 4%.  So obviously every single cent is going to help the administration, faculty and maybe the staff.  The taxpayers and students can just take a flying leap as far as the UND president is concerned.

Of course this is just a first step.  If they get this much money they’ll be putting in additional requests for an indoor track and other necessities.

The amount of greed evident here is astounding.  Now we don’t mind helping the students but it’s clear that the money doesn’t help them because some of the highest paid people in the state (administration and faculty) are demanding that we all sacrifice so they can live all the better.

Remember now this is just UND.  I’m sure that NDSU and the other colleges will be demanding their share.  Triple this number, add in a like figure for more K-12 education funding (John Hoeven is planning to spend $400 million) and you’ll see that unless we vote YES for Measures 1 and 2 tomorrow we won’t get tax relief.  The powers that be in Bismarck think a whole lot more of the education lobby than they do the taxpayers.

VOTE YES 1 & 2 tomorrow or you won’t get meaningful tax relief.