Your Online ASU Legislative Connection
Volume 2 Issue 2

Dear ASU Advocate Friend,

Email Action Alerts — we need your help!

The Arizona legislature has been in session for nearly two months and just like the weather this week, things are starting to heat up. As the House and Senate begin to formulate their budget proposals, we’re going to need your help.

You will start receiving action alerts from us asking you to contact targeted legislators on a given issue. It is absolutely critical to ASU’s success at the legislature that you follow through on the action alert by sending the pre-written email communications to your legislators provided through our action alert system.

At this writing, we have 846 advocates. If all of you were to email your legislator via this simple to use process, it would make a huge difference! So the next time you receive an email action alert from us, we would greatly appreciate it if you could send the pre-written email to your elected officials. The two minutes it takes to submit your message could be the difference in swaying a crucial vote on an issue of importance to ASU.

2005 ASU Day at the Capitol Wrap-Up

ASU Day at the Capitol, held on Monday, February 21st, was a terrific success!

Nearly 600 people played an important role in the daylong event, which included hundreds of legislators and staff who joined ASU representatives, students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends for a BBQ lunch at Wesley Bolin Plaza.

During the morning, several of our SDAN advocates participated in a training session, where they learned about the legislative process and took away skills to communicate effectively with their elected officials. Following this training session, over 50 of our volunteers met throughout the day with legislators to urge their support for Governor Napolitano’s budget request.

Another successful and fairly new component of ASU Day at the Capitol was the ASU Exhibitor Walk. This portion of the event allowed over 20 representatives from ASU’s campuses, colleges and divisions to highlight some of the innovative programs taking place throughout the university.

We would like to take the opportunity to thank the following sponsors for their support of 2005 ASU Day at the Capitol:

We would like to thank all our volunteers, sponsors and friends who came out to support ASU. Please mark your calendars, as the 2006 Day at the Capitol will be President’s Day, Monday, February 20, 2006. We look forward to an even bigger and better event next year.

ASU Legislative Update

Scott Smith, Director of State and Local Relations for ASU, provides this update from the Capitol:

The Arizona Legislature has passed the halfway point of a projected 100-day session. This session has seen an increased focus on the universities with the creation of standing committees in both chambers specifically for higher education. In addition, ongoing activities such as the Arizona Board of Regents’ university redesign efforts, the proposed collaborative Biomedical campus for the Arizona University System and ASU’s proposed downtown Phoenix campus, as well recent tuition increases, have contributed to this increased focus. In spite of competing priorities, our primary effort this session remains attempting to increase the state’s investment in ASU. This increased investment is critical to maintaining academic quality given the current and projected enrollment growth.

Budget Update

Budget discussions and negotiations are continuing at the Legislature. To briefly recap, the Governor is recommending a $22 million increase in the state’s investment in ASU for fiscal year 2006, whereas the Joint Legislative Budget Committee (JLBC) is recommending a $16.3 million increased investment. Moreover, the JLBC recommendation includes a provision that would require ASU to use $6.5 million in FY06 tuition revenues for enrollment growth.

ASU President Michael Crow has testified regarding ASU’s budget priorities before the Senate Appropriations, House Appropriations P, and House Universities, Community College and Technology Committees. In his testimony before these committees, President Crow has stressed that ASU’s core mission is the delivery of a quality undergraduate education to qualified students and that the university is valiantly striving to fulfill this mission but ASU’s enrollment growth has not been supported at the necessary level. Moreover, President Crow noted that the cost of providing instruction exceeds the available resources while the student enrollment growth continues and quality suffers. Ultimately, the end results are: large class sizes; high faculty-to-student-advisor ratios; poor retention rates and poor graduation rates. ASU’s lobbyists at the State Legislature have been reiterating these points in their efforts to secure an increased investment in ASU.

House Bill 2079

While efforts continue on the state budget, simultaneously House lawmakers have proposed legislation aimed at comprehensively reforming higher education. While the proposed amendment remains somewhat fluid, the key provisions of the strike-everything amendment include: (1) establishing a statutory university funding formula in which the state’s future investments would be linked to enrollment growth; (2) authorizing the community colleges to offer 4-year baccalaureate degrees in academic disciplines of law enforcement and fire services; health professions and teacher education; and, (3) increasing the state’s investment in higher education student financial aid. To read this legislation, please visit the following link:

http://www.azleg.state.az.us/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/legtext/47leg/1r/proposed/h%2E2079lk2%2Edoc%2Ehtm&DocType=P

Or to read recent newspaper articles regarding this proposal, please see the following links:

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0302universities02.html

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0303universities03.html

HB 2634 (tax credit; university research expenses)

Representative Michele Reagan (R-District 8) introduced HB 2634. ASU is supporting this legislation, which permits an additional individual or corporate income credit of 10% of the qualifying credit for the portion of incremental research conducted at an Arizona university for tax years 2006-2010. The premise behind this legislation is that granting an additional tax credit on the incremental investments in research at universities will facilitate more public/private partnerships and stimulate additional investments with potential commercial applications, which in turn will make Arizona more economically competitive and result in economic expansion.

SB 1241 (universities; faculty powers)

Senator Linda Gray (R-District 10) introduced SB 1241 due to concerns about how the proposed university redesign would impact faculty governance. The legislation specifies that the faculty of each state university campus have the right to determine its own faculty organizational structure and to select representatives to participate in institutional governance. We have made progress working with Senator Gray in trying to address her concerns and, subsequently to date, this legislation has not moved forward. We are hopeful that our efforts will mitigate the need for this legislation.

Technology Transfer Legislation

Both Senator Dean Martin (R-District 6) and Representative Laura Knaperek (R-District 17) introduced legislation to facilitate the university’s technology transfer capabilities. Sen. Martin introduced SB 1497 (state treasurer; universities; technology transfer) and Rep. Knaperek introduced HB2467 (university technology transfer; joint ventures). ASU appreciates Sen. Martin and Rep. Knaperek for their efforts in this regard and will continuing working with these legislators on this important subject.

Conclusion

We expect the second half of the legislative session to be even more demanding than the first half. While important deadlines for bill introductions and for hearing bills in their chambers of origin have passed, the true heavy lifting lays ahead as the lawmakers craft the fiscal year 2006 budget. If Arizona State University is to become the New American University as envisioned by President Crow, then we must convince state lawmakers to honor their commitment to our students and invest in their education to ensure the delivery of a quality undergraduate education. We will continue to keep you posted of our progress on these issues and we will expect your assistance in the very near future to communicate to your legislators that investing in ASU is a high priority for you as an Arizona voter.

Thank you very much for your interest and for taking time out of your busy schedule to keep abreast of how your alma mater is faring at the State Capitol.

We need your help – Please tell your friends about the ASU Advocacy Army!!

We are facing a challenging legislative session and we’ll need your help to urge our 90 legislators of the importance of Arizona State University and higher education in general.

846 members are great (our advocacy army is growing daily), but the more advocates we can recruit, the more powerful our voice will be at the state capitol. So please take a few minutes and email or call folks you know and give them our web site address—www.sundeviladvocates.org—tell them you’re an advocate, explain to them what it means and tell them they too can become an advocate in three easy steps:

1.) Go to www.sundeviladvocates.org
2.) Click on the link “Become a Member.”
3.) Fill out the quick and easy form and in less than two minutes they’ll become an official member of the Sun Devil Advocacy Army.

VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION PLEASE READ CAREFULLY

For our advocates who are currently registered with an “asu.edu” e-mail account, you will need to update your contact information and use an alternate e-mail address by going to this link:

http://capwiz.com/azsu/mlm/

Once there, simply scroll down to the bottom of the page, enter your email address and hit the “Go” button. From there, you’ll be able to enter another email address (home, personal or alternate) and thus be able to send email messages to your legislators during the upcoming legislative session.

ASU strictly prohibits the use of their property for personal use—including the use of university e-mail accounts. To read more on the policy please access: www.asu.edu/counsel/brief/political.html.

If you do not have an alternate e-mail address, there are many free e-mail providers in which you can subscribe to. Some of these include Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) or Hotmail (www.hotmail.com) or Mail (www.mail.com).

Closing Thoughts

We would like to thank you for taking the time to read through this month’s newsletter. As I talked about in the opening, it is absolutely imperative for our advocates to take the time to read action alerts and act upon them when requested to do so. Our legislators have commented in the past on the lack of constituent correspondence from ASU supporters—it’s time to turn the tables on them and let them know we are here and we care about the future of Arizona State University.

As in our past newsletters, we want to thank you for your signing up to be a Sun Devil Advocate. If you have any suggestions, comments or observations you would like to share with us, just click on this link advoteam@sundeviladvocates.org and let us know.

Jeff Grant, Director of Advocacy
ASU Alumni Association

P.S. If you want to become an active member of the ASU Alumni Association, one of the best ways you can give back is through membership in the ASU Alumni Association. The annual dues of $45 offer an affordable way to help build ASU’s reputation. Visit www.asu.edu/alumni/membership or call 1-800-ALUMNUS.

P.S.S. If you have a different e-mail address you would prefer us to use, just e-mail us at advoteam@sundeviladvocates.org with your new e-mail address and we’ll make the change.

If you don’t want to receive further issues of this electronic newsletter, send an unsubscribe e-mail to advoteam@sundeviladvocates.org with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line and the message field.