UW Regents Won’t Hear Presentation On Budget Cut Impacts

A group of Democratic state lawmakers are slamming a decision to scrap a presentation on how budget cut are affecting University of Wisconsin System campuses.

Campus chancellors were going to present impacts at a Board of Regents meeting that starts on Thursday in Green Bay, but UW System spokesman Alex Hummel said UW President Ray Cross canceled the presentation because it would have given short shrift to the impacts.

Instead, regents will visit campuses to see how budget cuts are being managed.

“We really need to make a broader statewide effort where our campuses are and with the partners and other stakeholders they work with to educate them about what’s been done,” Hummel said.

Four Democrats on the Joint Committee on Finance sent a letter to the Board of Regents on Wednesday criticizing the change. State Rep. Gordon Hintz was one of the four and believes seeing statewide impacts is important as the regents prepare their next budget request.

“The discussion at the local level should certainly be in addition to this, but why do we have a Board of Regents if we’re not actually going to have these discussions? I mean, it’s kind of embarrassing,” Hintz said.

Hintz also said he sees an effort to stifle news that could look bad for the governor. Cross has said the decision to cancel was solely his.

Regents will also vote on whether to approve new tenure policies for the UW-Madison. It’s the first campus to submit them since regents approved a systemwide framework last month.