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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 25, 1978)
Vol. 79, No. 86 Eugene, Oregon 97403 Wednesday, January 25, 1978 Funding Lieuallen seeks additional help for budget woes By RICHARD SEVEN Of the Emerald Roy Lieuallen, chancellor of the State System of Higher Educa tion, will ask the State Emergency Board for a helping hand in higher education's budgetary problems, Thursday in Salem. Higher education officials claim the Oregon Legislature "under funded" higher education by $2.6 million for the 1977-79 biennium. If Lieuallen can't persuade the Emergency Board to give some relief, universities around the state can expect more budget cuts. University Pres. William Boyd says if the cuts become neces sary , they will be more diffuse than the kind that suspended the School of Librarianship and cut CSPA's budget in half. "Our hope is that the losses due to underfunding will be tempor ary," says Boyd. “Any changes we would make to absorb the underfunding would be on the assumption that they would be temporary expedients." At the core of the budgetary problems is the legislative tech nique of “underfunding." This oc curred when the Legislature pur posely appropriated less than enough money for state agencies authorized expenses. The Legislature's reasoning for underfunding is that salary sav ings will occur when positions are held vacant, because of employee turnover throughout the biennium. However, Lieuallen says the heart of the problem is the way the Legislature treats higher educa tion. Unlike other state agencies, which build their base budgets for personnel services from the number of authorized positions they have, higher education's budqet is determined by its dollar total. "When other state agencies begin their new bienniums, they are appropriated funds on the number of approved positions they have,” Lieuallen explains. “Their underfunding from the previous biennium is left out. The one percent underfunding is than taken from that 100 percent budget base. "However, our dollar amount is reduced each biennium and not restored," Lieuallen says. “If the underfunding is carried forward biennium after biennium, we will get a base budget of zero. I don't think that’s the intention of underfunding." Lieuallen says the Emergency Board is currently higher education’s only source of relief. The board has $9 million worth ol appropriations to administer in cases just like this. “However," says Boyd, "$9 mill ion spread over 18 months of the unexpected isn't a great deal." The Millrace ducks and geese were finally left to clean themselves after the oil spill last Thursday. “We made an unsuccessful attempt to catch them that night, ' says Larry Lowenskon, regional engineer for the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). "I haven't seen any dead ducks out there, so maybe it's best that we didn't catch them. They seem to have managed on their own." Although Crowley Environ mental Services did a good job of cleaning the oil slick off the water’s surface Friday, Lowenskon says, there's still visible oil on the Millrace. A lot of it is from storm run-off pipes that empty into the Millrace. “ The DEQ is in the process of investigating the source of the Jan. 12 oil spill, but Lowen skon declined to comment on primary suspects. Photo by Adrienne Salinger Experiment proves successful 30th, Hilyard traffic problem solved An experiment that has so far drawn only one complaint went into effect last week to try to untangle some snarled traffic problems at 30th Avenue and Hilyard Street. According to Jim Hanks, Eugene traffic en gineer, the experiment to discontinue left turns at the intersection and offer alternative routes for drivers who usually make the turn has been a success for the six days it has been in effect. The experiment, the first of a two-phase program to ease the traffic congestion along the street, is part of a city traffic flow test, Hanks says. The experiment includes blocking off left turn lanes at the intersection, adding "No Left Turn" signs and covering the existing left-turn signals. The changes are intended to correct the traffic snarls and ease the flow of rush hour traffic. By KEVIN HARDEN Of the Emerald The second phase of the experiment won’t begin for at least 30 to 60 days and will include restoring the left-turn lanes without the left-turn signals, forcing motorists to wait for a break in the on-coming traffic before turning. Before the first phase of the experiment went into effect, Hanks says, four or five com plaints were raised concerning the increased traffic the experiment might cause in surround ing neighborhoods. But after the first day, Thursday, only one driver has registered a complaint with the city public works department. “When I went out the first day it looked like Amazon Parkway was dear of the back-ups that are usually there," Hanks says. Compared with a week ago, the tangled traffic was at a minimum. Alternative routes for drivers who need to turn left are at the 29th Avenue or 24th Avenue intersections along Hilyard Street for north bound motorists, and using the Amazon Park way from 19th Avenue and Pearl Street to Hilyard Street, for traffic to Lane Community College and the South Eugene area. Gauging the success of the experiment is hard to do with less than a week of operation, Hanks says. But an official observation will be made later this week to see if the experiment is accomplishing its god, he says.
