June 3 Letter from UW Officials on Joint Finance Actions

The following letter was widely distributed throughout the UW System last Friday, June 3:

Dear UW System Colleagues,

Late Friday, the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee (JFC) completed its work on the proposed 2011-13 biennial budget bill, including provisions related to the University of Wisconsin System. Keeping with the budget proposal submitted by Governor Walker, the committee approved a $250-million reduction in state taxpayer support for UW System over the next two years. Legislators offered many significant amendments to the bill, preserving our unified UW System and offering many long-sought administrative flexibilities to all UW institutions.

Here is a brief summary of the JFC amendments:

http://www.wisconsin.edu/wip/docs/Summary-of-JFC-Action.pdf

Here is the official public statement we issued after the committee vote:

http://www.wisconsin.edu/news/2011/r110603.htm

People from around the state (including many of you) spoke up in support of preserving a unified UW System that includes UW-Madison, and Legislators listened. UW Regents, Chancellors, and other state leaders argued convincingly in favor of new administrative flexibilities for all UW institutions, and the JFC amendment reflects significant progress in that area. At the same time, however, the combination of reduced funding and capped tuition revenues will put tremendous pressure on every UW institution and every academic department. 

Recognizing that pressure, we will continue the process of delegating maximum operational flexibility to every institution in the System. We will also continue to advocate strongly for the wisdom of an integrated system that serves the needs of UW stakeholders with quality, accessibility, and efficiency. The UW System has done that over its 40-year history. With the changes the budget bill will allow us to make, and further changes we will continue to request of the state, all our institutions together can chart a course for the 21^st century in the spirit of a renewed Wisconsin Idea. 

As the budget bill continues to make its way through the legislative process, we must work to ensure that all new administrative flexibilities from the state remain intact when the bill is signed into law. We must also address some specific areas of concern, such as new language that would undermine the WiscNet network that serves all UW campuses as well as cities, K-12 schools, libraries, hospitals, and hundreds of other members across the state. This same legislative language presents a major threat to several grant-funded partnerships, including the Metropolitan Unified Fiber Network (MUFN) project led by UW-Madison and the Building Community Capacity through Broadband (BCCB) project led by UW-Extension.

We will be reviewing the biennial budget developments with the full Board of Regents on Thursday morning at UW-Milwaukee. That meeting will be webcast live, and you are welcome to tune in for the discussion. A link to the live stream will be posted Thursday morning at www.wisconsin.edu and at www.twitter.com/uwsystem. 

Thank you for your hard work on behalf of the UW, and your attention to these important developments. We will do our best to keep you well informed in the days and months ahead. 

Charles Pruitt, President, UW System Board of Regents

Kevin P. Reilly, President, UW System

K-12 School Mandate Relief Bill Fails in Committee, Preserves Common School Fund Purpose

On Thursday, June 9, Assembly Bill 130, failed to pass committee by a vote of 5-6. Referred to by its supporters as a K-12 "mandate relief" bill, it would have, among other changes, removed the 25 percent limit on computer purchases with Common School Fund (CSF) proceeds. Current law requires schools districts to spend the CSF proceeds on materials and instructional resources for the library, except that up to 25% can be spent on school library computers and related software. One concern expressed by school librarians and others was that some districts would appropriate too much for computers and other hardware at the expense of educational content for those devices.

Voting against the bill: Representatives Steve Nass (R-Whitewater), Evan Wynn (R-Whitewater), Sondy Pope-Roberts (D-Middleton), Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee), Gordon Hintz (D-Oshkosh), and Fred Clark (D-Baraboo).

Reports are that there was significant discussion about the Common School Fund provision, with Representative Dean Knudson (R-Hudson) suggesting he might draft an amendment to the bill to move the cap from 25% to 50%. Wynn stated that he would not vote for the bill on the floor unless an amendment was added to protect the Common School Fund.

 

The Senate version, SB 95, was voted out of committee by a vote of 4-3 earlier this week.  

WLA Letter to Legislators About WiscNet

Your response to WLA's legislative alert has been tremendous. In addition to getting the word out to library supporters, WLA has also sent this letter to all legislators and Governor Walker, outlining our support for WiscNet and broadband expansion. A similar letter has been sent to several newspapers; we encourage you to add your own story (e.g., how much would Internet cost for your organization if WiscNet goes away?) and contact your local paper with this information.

On Friday, June 3, the state legislature's Joint Committee on Finance passed Motion 489 that would eliminate WiscNet as a department or office within the UW-Madison Department of Information Technology and eliminate $1.4 million in funding for WiscNet for 2012-13. The motion would also require the UW to return federal grant money that has already been awarded for a broadband expansion project, apparently because of concerns that that this project competes with BadgerNet.

We respectfully ask that you save taxpayers millions of dollars and move to delete sections 23-26 of Motion 489 on the floor of the legislature before the budget bill is approved and sent to Governor Walker for his signature.

It seems helpful first to define WiscNet and BadgerNet, since confusion exists about the difference between the two and how they would be affected by the UW-Extension’s federal broadband grant project. The Department of Administration (DOA) website describes BadgerNet Converged Network (BCN, or BadgerNet) as the “state-wide network serving all 72 counties by providing wide area network, Internet transport and video applications to state government and educational entities in Wisconsin. The BCN also provides network services to municipalities and other governmental entities such as Tribal nations, technical colleges and public and private K-12 schools in various locations in the state.”

WiscNet is one of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) listed by DOA for non-state agency BadgerNet customers. WiscNet was created in 1990 by the UW, long before most telephone companies could even be called ISPs.  Information from WiscNet indicates that the $1.4 million cut by Joint Finance is not a subsidy to WiscNet from the UW, but payment for technical support services provided by WiscNet.

WiscNet has become the ISP of choice for 450 educational and community institutions: all public institutions of higher education, 95% of public libraries and 80% of schools currently use WiscNet. If WiscNet operations are changed as proposed by Joint Finance, these institutions would pay two to three times MORE for Internet service from for-profit vendors. Actually, it’s more accurate to say that taxpayers would foot the increased bill, or library patrons and students in your district would no longer have the access they need and want. But the cost is much greater than just dollars. The successful cooperative and collaborative network that WiscNet has fostered between higher education, K-12 education and libraries for the past 16 years could disappear.

For-profit telecommunications companies, some represented by AccessWisconsin, seem most concerned about the UW-Extension’s federal broadband grant project, already underway. AccessWisconsin members, who are valued partners in BadgerNet, say that they should not have to compete with a taxpayer-funded agency. The irony is that telecommunications companies, including AccessWisconsin members, currently benefit from about $90 million annually in taxpayer funding through the Universal Service Fund to enhance their ability to provide cost-effective service in rural areas.  We would say that is a wise investment.
AccessWisconsin also argues that the federal broadband grant to UW-Extension is a duplication of BadgerNet that would weaken that network. While BadgerNet provides great benefit to many institutions (with a taxpayer subsidy of $16.8 million annually, by the way), pricing is still too high for many institutions.  BadgerNet provides 100Mbps service at $6,000 per month and a 1,000Mbps service at $49,500 – or almost $600,000 per year! If the UW grant project is completed, an institution will be able to get 1,000Mbps for only $10,000 annually.  While BadgerNet prices are currently under negotiation and may be decreased somewhat, the return on the investment of the UW project is clear.

Finally, we find it difficult to understand why AccessWisconsin is so opposed to a federal broadband grant when its members in fact sought a similar grant for themselves. DOA and the BadgerNet Access Alliance (BNAA), which includes AccessWisconsin and larger telecommunications companies, received $23 million in federal funding to enhance BadgerNet via expansion of broadband fiber throughout the state.  WLA met with BadgerNet vendors several times during the grant process and supported the DOA/BNAA federal grant proposal. Imagine our frustration when the needs of 467 schools and libraries were dashed because BNAA and DOA could not successfully negotiate the contract, and the money was returned to the federal government.

We also understand that the UW used an open bid process to seek a partnership with for-profit phone companies on their broadband project, but none agreed to participate.

Please move to delete sections 23-26 of Motion 489 on the floor of the legislature before the budget bill is sent to Governor Walker for his signature. Please keep WiscNet as it currently operates and also allow the UW broadband project to move forward.

Thank you very much for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,
Rhonda Puntney, President
Wisconsin Library Association

President Rhonda Puntney's Remarks on Advocacy for Support Staff Conference

WLA President Rhonda Puntney was asked to give a brief address to welcome Support Staff One-day Conference attendees on May 25. Here are her remarks:
About a month or two in to my WLA presidency, I began to realize that we are all in a unique position to advocate not only for ourselves, but also for our libraries and our patrons, regardless of where we’re employed.  Advocacy has become an integral part of my daily routine, in and out of the office.  I particularly realized this one day shortly after Lisa Strand, the WLA executive director, and I cancelled Library Legislative Day in February.

I returned home after a doctor’s appointment to pick up my laptop and the inevitable stack of work I’d taken home over the weekend (and barely glanced at) and I quickly scanned my email.  We have voice-over-IP phones at Lakeshores, which is great because I can quickly see who’s called and hear the message from my email when I’m home.  On that particular day, the message I’d received was from John Berry, the editor-in-chief for Library Journal.  He wanted to talk to ME – ME – about the events going on in Madison.  And he wanted to talk about why we cancelled Library Legislative Day.

Instead of being cool, calm, and collected – and promptly returning his phone call, I called Lisa.  And I called a friend from ALA Council, someone I knew who knew John Berry.

So when I did finally return his phone call, I had a list of things – talking points – ready to go and the confidence in myself to articulate what I wanted to tell him about our situation in Wisconsin.  I commented then to John Berry, and he used it in his column in the March 15th edition of LJ, that I was “guardedly optimistic” about how we’d fare with the legislature, and our local funding agencies.

Charles Simic’s comments in the New York Review of Books on May 22nd on the death of public libraries called “A Country without Libraries”, draws attention to the issues of funding libraries.  I found this paragraph particularly telling:

“I heard some politician say recently that closing libraries is no big deal, since the kids now have the Internet to do their reading and school work.  It’s not the same thing.  As any teacher who recalls the time when students still went to libraries and read books could tell him, study and reflection come more naturally to someone bent over a book.  Seeing others, too, absorbed in their reading, holding up or pressing down on different-looking books, some intimidating in their appearance, others inviting, makes one a participant in one of the oldest and most noble human activities. Yes, reading books is a slow, time-consuming, and often tedious process.  In comparison, surfing the Internet is a quick, distracting activity in which one searches for a specific subject, finds it, and then reads about it—often by skipping a great deal of material and absorbing only pertinent fragments.  Books require patience, sustained attention to what is on the page, and frequent rest periods for reverie, so that the meaning of what we are reading settles in and makes its full impact.”

While I wholeheartedly agree with his statements here, as well as with the rest of his article, he neglected to cast an eye upon the aspects of library service beyond books and the internet that make all types of libraries in Wisconsin an integral part of their communities, whether it’s the small town community center focused public library, one of the many academic libraries on our college and technical school campuses, the large public library with several branches, or specialized libraries.

We are about so much more than books and free wi-fi.

What makes us strong is our adaptability, our ability to see beyond the demise of our esoteric view of the “library” as an Charles Simic’s traditional institutional icon.  I see that adaptability reflected in today’s breakout sessions on RFID, multimedia software, certification, customer service, degree completion, and “Semanticloud.0”.  (Which I have to confess, I had to look that up!  And I did exactly what Charles Simic warns against!)

How many of us got our jobs in libraryland or decided to back to school to become a librarian with a hazy mental image ourselves sitting behind a desk and READING?  How many of us had that bubble burst within the first five minutes actually on the job?  And let’s be realistic, how many of us today would find that challenging?

I also found it interesting that Charles Simic did not see how we’ve evolved from that iconic library to vibrant places of learning where all types of media are embraced for learning and recreational activities, and that at the center of it all he would have found US.  Those of us for whom “informational literacy” and “critical thinking” are more than a buzz words.  Those of us who don’t cringe from proselytizing the virtues of today’s public library to their neighbor in line at Pick and Save or Woodman’s.  And one of us who would still tell the editor-in-chief of Library Journal that she is “guardedly optimistic” about Wisconsin’s libraries.  We are the ones who make libraries strong.

Access Wisconsin Applauds Joint Finance Action on WiscNet

Access Wisconsin, one of the managing partners of the BadgerNet Converged Network, issued a statement today, applauding Joint Finance Committee Motion 489, which eliminates WiscNet as an office or department of the UW-Madison's Department of Information Technology. 

Access Wisconsin is a group of smaller, local telecommunications companies that partner with Verizon, AT&T, CenturyTel and KDL to make up the BCN. 

Read the statement by Access Wisconsin's President and CEO, Mark Weller:
http://www.wispolitics.com/1006/110607accessWI_release.pdf

End of WiscNet? Joint Finance Eliminates UW-Madison WiscNet Office in DoIT

TAKE ACTION: WLA's Legislative Alert
In addition to requiring the return of federal broadband funds, the Omnibus University of Wisconsin System motion passed Friday (Motion 489) by the state legislature's Joint Committee on Finance included the following provision:
"Specify that WiscNet could no longer be a department or office within the UW-Madison Division of Information Technology beginning on July 1, 2012, and delete $1,400,000 PR from the UW System related to WiscNet in 2012-13. Require the Legislative Audit Bureau to conduct a program audit and a financial audit of the Board of Regents' use of telecommunication services and relationship with WiscNet."

The note in the motion indicates under current law, the Board of Regents is prohibited from providing telecommunication services that are available from a private telecommunications carrier to the general public or any other public or private entity. Currently, WiscNet services more than 450 public and private research, education and government organizations. According to Bob Bocher, Division for Libraries consultant and a WiscNet board member, WiscNet provides about 95% of libraries and about 80% of school districts with Internet access. The cost of receiving this service through private vendor is estimated to be two to three times higher than through WiscNet. See the WiscNet website for more information.

WLA will be developing a legislative alert to be issued later today or early tomorrow. Please stay tuned.

Joint Finance Passes Omnibus UW System Motion: No to Separate UW-Madison, Broadband Funds

The Joint Finance Committee tonight passed an Omnibus Motion on the University of Wisconsin System that includes, among other items, the decision to not spin UW-Madison off as a separate public entity and prohibits the system from providing telecommunications services and accepting federal broadband funds. The latter would stop a project underway to expand broadband through Community Area Networks (CANs) to about 80 libraries and schools, among other entities, and return millions to the federal government.

WLA pushed for acceptance of an earlier broadband grant of more than $23 million that would have expanded BadgerNet for more than 450 schools and libraries. The state returned that grant earlier this year after the Department of Administration was unable to negotiate an agreement between telecommunications providers and the National Telecommunication and Information Administration. The UW System grant had remained as an opportunity to add capacity for a smaller number of schools and libraries.

It is possible that further amendments to the budget bill will occur on the floor of the legislature after Joint Finance completes its work. Stay tuned!

You can read more about Joint Finance activities on the WisPolitics Budget Blog or view proceedings live (or archived) at WisconsinEye.

Joint Finance Reduces Cuts to Municipalities; Eliminates Emergency Services MOE

On June 2, the state legislature's Joint Finance Committee voted to eliminate the emergency services maintenance of effort funding requirement and restored some of the shared revenue cuts for counties and municipalities.

Omnibus Motion 450, passed on vote of 11-4, provided a net reduction in shared revenue payments of $76,750,000, rather than the reduction of $96,000,000 proposed by Governor Walker. The committee also eliminated the requirement that counties and municipalities maintain their level of spending for emergency services at the 2009 level. This emergency services maintenance of effort law was passed in the prior biennium.

Note that the governor had eliminated maintenance of effort funding for public libraries in his budget proposal. Efforts to restore MOE for public libraries have not been successful to date.

Joint Finance Restores Funding to Talking Book & Braille Library, State Law Library

The state legislature's Joint Committee on Finance (JFC) is scheduled to meet again today and tomorrow to complete its work on the 2011-13 state budget.

On May 26, JFC approved one-time funding of $41,000 to the State Law Library for the purchase of West's National Law Reporter System on CD-ROM. On May 27, the committee also voted 16-0 to restore $183,400 for the Talking Book and Braille Library for the biennium. In action in May 3, the committee voted 16-0 to restore $512,000 to BadgerLink.(Restoration of funding refers to changes to the governor's budget proposal, which proposed 10% cuts to all library-related programs in the first year of the biennium.)

Although the State Law Library allocation was provided from general purpose revenue (GPR), other library-related funding is provided via the Universal Service Funds, or SEG funding. Thus far, funding has not been restored for public library systems or the remaining statewide resource contracts (Cooperative Children's Book Center, Milwaukee Public Library or WiLS). In addition, maintenance of effort funding for public libraries is still slated for elimination. WLA seeks restoration of maintenance of effort and library-related funding not yet restored and has issued several legislative alerts to members on these matters.

You can hear or watch JFC proceedings live and archived on WisconsinEye.

WLA Conference to feature Scott Dikkers, Onion Founder, and More

Join us at the WLA Conference, November 1-4 at the Milwaukee Hilton and Frontier Airlines Center! What other event can bring together such a fantastic pool of talented professionals like this year’s keynoter, internationally renowned speaker Stephen Abram, as well as the engaging and nationally recognized children’s writer/illustrator Tad Hills, or Mike Gousha, Distinguished Fellow in Law and Public Policy at Marquette University Law School, and contributing anchor and reporter for WISN-TV in Milwaukee, plus over 70 training/informational sessions to choose from?  Add to this the wonderful WLA/WLAF Annual Awards Dinner, interesting tours, state of the art trade show exhibits, an autograph garden, and an opportunity to take part in the fun WLA Foundation Fundraiser at the hip nightspot, Spin Milwaukee!

And, of course, there’s the city itself!

Milwaukee offers you so many cultural and entertainment options before, between and/or after events.  The Historic Third Ward, http://www.historicthirdward.org with its variety of dining and theatre options; the Milwaukee PAC; the Milwaukee Art Museum; the Bradley Center; Discovery World at Pier Wisconsin; The Milwaukee Public Museum; Pabst Theatre; the Milwaukee Zoo; excellent shopping; Miller Brewery tours (and tastings)…even the Potawatomi Casino. Our conference hotel, the beautiful Hilton Milwaukee City Center also offers you options, such as a Starbuck’s and the Milwaukee Chop House. (If you decide to extend your stay into the weekend, the hotel even  features Paradise Landing, the first urban indoor water park!) 

Speaking of speakers…Look who’s speaking at the President’s Luncheon

He's probably created more viral internet content than anyone alive. His podcasts have been ranked #1 by iTunes more years running than any other. His work has won more Webby Awards than any single individual or organization. He founded the world's first humor website. He's Scott Dikkers, the American humor pioneer who founded The Onion and served as its editor-in-chief for nearly two decades. He recently left The Onion to start Dikkers Cartoon Company (dikkers.com) to make short cartoons, comics and other fun stuff for all audiences. 
 
We’re sure you’ll be glad you included the President’s Luncheon on your calendar “to do” list.  What a great way to wrap up a memorable conference.  See you there!
--Michael Kenney, 2011 WLA Conference Publicity Chair