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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 29, 1982)
Candidates.. . Issues. Ballot Measures... Inside Oregon daily emerald Friday, October 29, 1982 Eugene, Oregon Volume 84. Number 40 Ghosts, goblins, and things that go bump in the night will abound this weekend of All Hallow's Eve. Not everyone will be wearing an ET costume, note this particular snake charmer. She resides at the original g^ffim^mme at 65 Ross Lane. The hou$4, sponsored by the Boys,and A$ Society, will be open until Somfoy night. It Costs $1.50 fqf seniors and under 12 years, $2 for everybody else. 4fcj Law students present brief against Watt plan By Frank Shaw Ot th« Emerald Three University law students have filed a “friend-of the-court" brief in an environmental lawsuit involving Secretary of the Interior James Watt's proposal to lease space on the continental shelf for offshore-oil drilling in Northern California Tod Smith, Willy Weigand and John Philipson are the law students who presented the brief Oct. 25 to the U S. Court of Appeals in Washington D C. at the request of the Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition, the Oregon Environmental Council and the Oregon Wilderness Coalition Mike Axline, co-director of the Pacific Northwest Resource Center, defines a friend-of-the-court brief as a document that provides information and support for the court It usually is filed in new or especially controversial cases, Axline says The thrust of the brief, says Weigand, “is that when you look at environmental costs versus benefits of potential oil discovery the drilling just doesn't make sense.” Watt's plan makes one billion acres of offshore land available for leasing The plan accelerates the leasing process, decreasing the time for comments by state and individuals. The problem is that the secretary's study stopped at the Oregon/California border, Wiegand says The effects of any oil spill, the students argue, would extend into Oregon and Washington “Our special interest is to point out the increased environmental sensitivity of the Oregon coast to oil damage.” Axline says Salmon fisheries, pink shrimp beds, crab beds and proposed and existing marine fisheries along the coast could be endangered by the drilling. The other flaw in Watt's analyses, says Weigand, is that the secretary did not divide California up into small enough sections. He looked at Central and Northern California as one unit and set up his analysis from that. "If the secretary had broken the state up like he should have,” Weigand says, "the economic profitability for drilling off the northern California coast would only be marginal.” Commission recommendations depend on blind hope and funds By Debbie Howlett Of the Emerald SALEM — The Oregon Educational Coordinating Com mission seemed to be playing a game of blind man's bluff Thursday when it made educa tion budget and tuition recommendations for the next biennium. In spite of the unknowns the commission went ahead and recommended a white cane — differential tuition for students. The commission doesn't know how much money will be in the state's general fund — which is where the bulk of higher education’s funding comes from. They don't know who they'll be making recommendations to — whether it will be Gov. Vic Atiyeh or his challenger, Ted Kulongoski. And until last night, almost no one on the commission that coordinates education on all levels in the state had seen or been able to study the higher education recommendations So T.K. Olson, executive director of the OECC, came up with an eye-opening “altern ative scenarios” table — a theoretical allocation for funds The table shows four different levels of funding for higher education, which range from “high optimistic” at $468 million to "low pessimistic" at $378 million. The other two dollar amounts are $428 million (low optimistic) and $415 million (high pessimistic). The state system s total budget request is over $606 million. “The illustrative allocations do not constitute a specific recommendation for any agency funding,” Olson said “The table and its implications do point out vividly the need to examine priorities and practices in a fundamental way," Olson said. Aside from providing the scenarios, Olson and the OECC questioned the disparity between education budget requests and what seems to be the most likely amount the legislature will offer “Can you get there from here? My answer is: 'no, I don’t think so,' " Olson said Olson told the commission that there are two options — to raise state funding levels, either by reallocating money in the general fund or increasing revenue; or to cut programs. “That (decision) may be forced upon us,” Olson said. "To do neither, either, or both are political decisions in the hands of others, but the com mission can certainly provide evidence and judgement about educational need. Olson went on to address specific problems in higher education which he termed “acute and legitimate needs that should be addressed immediately.” The areas Olson identified are maintenance problems, faculty salaries, libraries, research and economic development, and tuition. The proposal for tuition was at least as eye-opening as the budget scenarios. Olson recommended, as the state system’s top priority tui tion option, a "differential” tui tion. Lower division students would pay less tuition than up per division students — much like undergraduate and graduate tuition structures now Olson proposed that the lower division tuition be set at $100-150 lower than 1982-83 levels. “A reduction of resident lower-division tuition, or at least a freeze, is a preferred action and can be justified by common sense," Olson said. “It's really a recommendation to the (State Board of Higher Education) to reassess their tui tion policy,” Olson said The implementation of the differential would result in about a $4-6 million dollar loss right away, Olson said. But, the commission expressed that any tuition revenues lost through the differential be "picked up through general fund alloca tions.”
