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That’s a big disappointment. Essentially, it means that, while the Legislature was willing to allow UW-L to increase tuition in order to add more faculty and students, the Senate leadership was unwilling to allow the additional financial aid to help ease the burden of the tuition hikes.
Senate Majority Leader Russell Decker, D-Weston, sent the bill to the Joint Finance Committee, which was not set to hold any more meetings.
Decker did allow Sen. Dan Kapanke, a La Crosse Republican and supporter of the bill, to have a voice vote to try to pull the bill from committee, but that failed on a party-line vote — with all Democrats opposing the effort and Republicans in favor.
What happens next? Kapanke said he will try to get the measure included in the budget repair bill that the Legislature will soon address.
“I pleaded with the majority leader to bring it up because it was the right thing to do,” Kapanke said. “I asked him to do the right thing for the students.”
UW-L has been struggling for months to get the tuition flexibility needed to overcome state budget cuts and hire additional faculty and staff to teach more students.
It finally passed in the budget last year, but the university wanted to earmark more money for financial aid.
The financial aid proposal was not in the least controversial in the Assembly, where that house’s version of the bill passed on a voice vote with no objections.
But Decker refused to allow the bill to get a vote.
No new spending would have been involved, so the opposition by the Senate Democratic leadership was baffling. The move by Decker smacked of political game-playing and partisanship at its worst.
UW-L — and taxpayers across the state who fund the UW System — deserved better treatment than to be victimized by ridiculous partisan politics.
Let’s hope the reception is better during the budget repair bill deliberation to come.
