December 12-17, 2014
Dec 12 20:36 Halbig v. Burwell: What if? Dec 15 07:03 SCSU budget update Dec 15 23:26 President Potter's plan Dec 16 11:09 Bakken infrastructure fight Dec 17 10:29 Potter's transparency issues
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Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Halbig v. Burwell: What if?
Dylan Scott's article about what might happen if the Supreme Court invalidates health insurance subsidies being paid to people who bought insurance through HealthCare.gov is fascinating. For instance:
What leeway does the ACA itself give the administration? It seems self-evident that the states currently using the federal exchange would be required to do something, to "establish" their own exchanges, and the Health and Human Services Department therefore couldn't just decree that all exchanges are state-based. States also probably need to do more than, say, sign a piece of paper declaring their exchange state-based.
"Now you could perhaps define the word 'established' down. HHS might be tempted to do so," Bagley said. "But at the minimum, that kind of move from the administration would be sure to provoke a prompt legal response."
There's an additional problem not cited in the article. Specifically, state-established exchanges are part of Section 1311 :
(d) Requirements
(1) In general
An Exchange shall be a governmental agency or nonprofit entity that is established by a State.
Changing that language requires legislation, which Mitch McConnell might agree to in exchange for other concessions:
That also extends to Congress, which as Bagley and Jones both noted, could correct the problem with ease by amending the law to allow tax credits on the federal exchanges. "Congress could fix this with a stroke of the pen," Bagley said. "I could write the statute in a single sentence."
But nobody is really expecting that. Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said earlier this month that SCOTUS could "take down" Obamacare in the King case and that would open up the opportunity for "a major do-over."
"If that were to be the case, I would assume that you could have a mulligan here, a major do-over of the whole thing," he said, in comments flagged by the Washington Post's Greg Sargent.
While the administration might be willing to do a lot to save the law, an emboldened Republican Congress seems unlikely to settle for anything less than major concessions, as McConnell suggests. So a fix in Washington doesn't appear in the cards.
It's interesting that Democrats fear a Washington fix because that would require them making major concessions in exchange for those subsidies. In other words, DC Democrats are most afraid of actually improving the ACA.
That's insane on a multitude of fronts, starting with the fact that the ACA is a weighty millstone around their political necks. Democrats got crushed in 2010 and 2014 because of the ACA. Despite experiencing those historical thumpings, Democrats don't want to change the ACA. It's their right to commit political suicide.
Posted Friday, December 12, 2014 8:36 PM
Comment 1 by walter hanson at 13-Dec-14 11:27 AM
Gary:
Lets keep in mind two things:
One of the key selling points for Obamacare was suppose to be the free care or greatly reduce health care expenses. No subsidies there will be dramatic price increases.
Two, a lot of states didn't want to set up the exchanges because they were trying to protect themselves from extra medical costs being shoved on to them by the federal government. How will the states that have been trying to avoid that extra cost not be affected by the so called simple switch.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Comment 2 by Kate Smith at 16-Dec-14 01:21 PM
As far as I can see, the ACA does nothing to reduce the cost of healthcare. It has simply reduced the cost of health INSURANCE and only for a few. That health insurance will continue to pay the same prices which go up each year, and not due to the ACA except in the most minimal way. Minimal because, if you can not afford the $300 per month or more for health insurance (3600 per year), how in the world are you going to be able to pay the first $5,000-6000 in care before coverage starts to pay? Those first charges of the year are now considered compensated care because the patient has insurance but studies have shown the collection rate is not much better then uninsured rates for the newly insured. Long ago, we doomed the healthcare industry to ever increasing costs by demanding that in exchange for an opportunity to do business that all hospitals stabilize every patient that comes in their door regardless of their ability to pay. No matter how much you try to transfer the cost of healthcare, it is the patient in the end that pays all costs and, in my experience, a very small profit margin that for the most part gets reinvested back into the healthcare system.
SCSU budget update
"Managing Our Budget"
by Silence Dogood
On December 9, 2014, President Potter sent an email to all faculty and staff entitled "Managing our budget." Here's what President Potter said in that email:
This is not the first time President Potter has invoked "demographics" to explain the enrollment decline at SCSU. The first question to be answered is whether or not the assertion about demographics as the cause of the enrollment decline is credible. The following figure shows the FYE enrollments from FY03 through FY14 plus each university's projected enrollments for FY15, FY16 and FY17:
Unfortunately, in looking at the data for MnSCU enrollments at the seven state universities, President Potter has to come up with an explanation as to why the "changing demographics" has led to increases or at least stable enrollments at five of the seven state universities. Only Moorhead and SCSU show significant declines. Clearly, President Potter wants to find something to blame for SCSU's enrollment decline. Otherwise, he might have to accept responsibility for SCSU's enrollment decline.
After a 12.1% decline in enrollment from FY11 through FY14, the President at Moorhead was 'encouraged' to retire. Over the same time period, the enrollment at SCSU declined 17.3%. It is interesting to note that during this time period when enrollment was declining 6.9% in FY12, 6.4% in FY13 and 5.1% in FY14, President Potter received "Exceptional Performance Pay" for FY12 of $12,000 and for FY13 of $13,000. One is only left to imagine how much the enrollment at SCSU would have declined had he not been so 'exceptional.'
The second part of President Potter's statement cites declining enrollments "across Minnesota and the region." In September, the Eau Claire Leader Telegram published an article on September 27th, 2014 stating that enrollment at University of Wisconsin - River Falls was within twenty students of having the same enrollment from the prior year and that the University of Wisconsin - Stout was within eight students of setting a new record enrollment.
Looking at the Wisconsin university system, enrollment data released in September shows the comprehensive universities, which are the most like the MnSCU universities are actually up in enrollment by 1.6%. Over the time period FY11 through FY14, the worst performing university is UW-Parkside with a decline in enrollment of 10.5%. Compare this with SCSU's decline of 17.3% over the same period of time and a decline of 'only' 10.5% starts looking pretty good. It is also important to note that two universities are up over 7% and one is up nearly 13%! This certainly does not look like declines due to demographics, as President Potter says, "across Minnesota and the region."
Are some universities in Minnesota and the region experiencing an enrollment decline? The answer is yes. However, because many universities are increasing their enrollments, it is clear that rather than simply acknowledge that there has been a recent decline in students graduating from high school, they decided to do something proactively rather than just accept their supposed fate that enrollment is going to go down.
Compare this to the situation at SCSU. President Potter, at first, didn't even acknowledge that the enrollment was going down. When that no longer worked, he began saying that he's 'right sizing' the university. Unfortunately, without an enrollment management plan, everyone just had to take his word for it. However, we must have overshot President Potter's 'right size' because he now states:
For FY12 FYE enrollment dropped 6.9%, for FY13 FYE enrollment dropped 6.3%, for FY14 FYE enrollment dropped 5.1%, and for FY15 FYE enrollment is on the way to being down over 5% again. Now that the administration has finally recognized the enrollment drop over a four-year period is over 21%, the administration has announced "initiatives to increase enrollment."
The enrollment decline also has significant financial consequences. More than a week after opening convocation ceremonies last August, President Potter announced that for FY15 there was budget shortfall of $9,542,000. In his December 9th email, President Potter announced "a number of activities to manage our FY15 budget."
Finally, President Potter has decided to convene a "steering group" to "identify opportunities for cost reductions." This is 'administrative speak' for cuts.
Clearly, SCSU is an outlier among the MnSCU universities - and not in a good way! While cuts may be necessary because of the current financial situation, one must ask what led to the current financial situation. If we don't understand what led us to the position we currently find ourselves, as George Santayana once said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Five years ago, under the guise of reorganization, the administration cut $14,500,000 from the budget (we now know that perhaps only $2,500,000 needed to be cut). Unfortunately, now only five years later, the situation is repeating itself. In this case, only $9,542,000 needs to be cut so that might be considered 'progress.' However, since the administration failed to learn from the past and take corrective action, it appears that SCSU is condemned to repeat it.
Posted Monday, December 15, 2014 7:03 AM
Comment 1 by Patrick-M at 15-Dec-14 08:23 AM
According to the SCSU Undergraduate Admissions web page: http://bit.ly/1AcMcCO COST FOR 2014-15: In-state tuition and fees, books and supplies, room and board is $16,302. Now if we added the 200 Aviation students that are no longer attending due to Potter, Maholtra and DeGroote's fine wisdom of closing the program there would be (200 X $16,302) $3,260,400 more in the coffers (minus about $400,000 program costs). Guess they don't require basic business skills to be a university administrator. They only need to know how to pander to the faculty/staff in the "social conscious" degrees and blame others for their failings.
President Potter's plan
Summer School Redux
by Silence Dogood
On December 9, 2014, President Potter sent an email to all faculty and staff entitled "Managing our budget." Here's what President Potter said in his email:
Let's look at the fourth bullet point in more detail. The following figure shows the FYE enrollment from Summer'06 through Summer'14:
Clearly, since Summer'10, the enrollment has been what can only be described as a 'freefall.' From Summer'10 through Summer'14, the drop of 409 FYE represents a decline of 30.9%. This fall, the enrollment at the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire fell 1.5% and the administration has been holding meetings to try to understand why there was a decline AND what can be done to reverse the drop and prevent it from becoming a 'trend.'
Summer school operates differently than the regular academic year. It may be hard to understand but despite a drop of 9.0% in FY12, and an 11.4% drop in FY13, the university actually made more money than in each of the previous summers. This can be accomplished simply by increasing class sizes and hiring lower cost faculty, both of which raise the profitability of a course. However, at some point, the declines in enrollment do translate into decreased revenue.
It is also interesting to look at the summer enrollments at the other MnSCU universities. The following figure shows FYE enrollments at all of the MnSCU universities from Summer'06 through Summer'14.
From the figure, it is clear that the three MnSCU universities with the largest summer enrollments (SCSU, Winona, and Mankato) all experienced declines in enrollment for Summer'14. The four universities with the smallest summer enrollments (Winona, Moorhead, Bemidji, and Southwest) all experienced increases in enrollment for Summer'14.
It is also clear from the Figure that SCSU was once the leader in summer enrollments by a wide margin and has now dropped to third. If the trend is extended, it won't be too long before SCSU slips to fourth behind Winona, whose rate of growth is increasing.
The drop in summer enrollment at SCSU didn't happen in one year, it took four years to drop 30.9%. However, it shouldn't have taken four years to figure out that something was going wrong with the enrollment in summer school. After dropping 9.0% in Summer'11, alarm bells should have been going off in the administration building. For Summer'11, SCSU was the only MnSCU university with a decline in summer enrollment!
For Summer'12, SCSU's decline increased to 11.4%. However, Summer'12 SCSU was not alone in declining. Moorhead led the way with a one-year decline of 17.9%! Bemidji lost 7.6%, Southwest lost 6.8%, Mankato and Winona both lost 3.3%. However, Metro was nearly flat losing only 0.2%.
Unfortunately, the SCSU administration was either unaware of the declines in the summer enrollment for 2011 and 2012 or didn't know what to do because enrollment again dropped 5.4% for Summer'13. Although a decline, the rate of decline was half of the previous year. This in itself might have been considered a small 'victory.' Perhaps the administration thought the problem with declining enrollment was taking care of itself. Unfortunately, for Summer'14 the enrollment decline nearly doubled in increasing to 9.4%.
Now, after a four-year period in which enrollment has dropped 30.9%, the President announces that he's "taking steps to revitalize our summer school enrollment." The question that needs to be answered: Why did it take so long for President Potter to figure out there was a problem in the first place?
Posted Monday, December 15, 2014 11:26 PM
Comment 1 by Crimson Trace at 16-Dec-14 09:14 AM
The decline for SCSU as indicated on the graph is steeper and scarier than the steepest roller coaster at Six Flags. This president should have been fired 3 times over by now. Where will it end? When will Rosenstone do his job and provide oversight to SCSU? Wait...he is too busy with his charting the disaster initiative while collecting no confidence resolutions.
So Potter yelled at a minority employee to the point s/he went home sick for a couple of days? "Hands Up...Don't Yell!" should be the new motto for his civility initiative.
Bakken infrastructure fight
Don Davis's article is the perfect starting point for highlighting the upcoming fight between Minnesota's farmers and Twin Cities environmentalists:
From Gov. Mark Dayton on down, it is common to hear them wishing that Minnesota had a resource worth as much as that being pumped from the Bakken oil field in western North Dakota. Then, almost without pause, a politician can pivot and complain that North Dakota's oil makes Minnesota a more dangerous state.
So it was no surprise the other day when the Minnesota Legislative Energy Commission slipped, as if on an oil puddle, from talking about rail congestion slowing the delay of coal to power plants to the dangers of railroads transporting oil across the state. Rail safety is not in the commission's portfolio, but over the past couple of years, the nine or 10 oil trains a day that pass through Minnesota has become an explosive issue in the Capitol.
Six or seven trains, each with at least 100 cars of oil, travel from Moorhead through the Twin Cities and on southeast each day, headed to Midwest and East Coast refineries. Fewer go from North Dakota, then south through Willmar and Marshall to Oklahoma and the Gulf Coast. So when Dave Christianson of the Minnesota Department of Transportation was telling the commissioner about rail congestion that many blame on North Dakota crude oil, questions arose about rail oil safety.
Last fall, Gov. Dayton sidestepped why the commissioners he appointed to the Public Utilities Commission voted to stall building the Sandpiper Pipeline by 3-5 years. Minnesota is at a tipping point, a crisis:
Christianson said that if every pipeline proposed through 2025 is built, 'we could empty all the oil trains being moved today.' However, he quickly added, Bakken production is growing so fast that its output would be so big that pipelines could not handle it all and the same number of oil trains would be needed as are on the tracks today.
In other words, Minnesota needs to throw environmentalists under the bus. It's indisputable that pipelines are the safest way of transporting oil from the oil fields to refineries. It's equally indisputable that they aren't 100% safe. What's sad is that environmentalists insist that they be perfectly safe.
They insist on that knowing that that isn't possible.
Meanwhile, farmers can't get their grains to market and iron ore can't get their ore to steel mills. Environmentalists have consistently won those fights during the Obama administration. Now we're facing a crisis. We're experiencing a fracking boom but we don't have the infrastructure to transport the oil & natural gas fracking is producing.
This year, the DFL will have to decide if they're pro-farmer or pro-environmentalist. Gas prices are dropping. Home heating bills are less expensive. Families are liking the fact that they've got more money in their pockets when they finish paying their bills. That trend isn't likely to stop anytime soon:
Posted Tuesday, December 16, 2014 11:10 AM
Comment 1 by Terry Stone at 16-Dec-14 01:23 PM
Minnesota's ticket to cash in on the ND oil boom is frac sand production. Dayton and the DFL tried hard to place a moratorium on frac sand production as soon as it became economically significant.
Comment 2 by Gary Gross at 16-Dec-14 02:07 PM
DFL legislators went on the record saying that the frack sand moratorium would end the Bakken boom.
All it would've done was cause Minnesotans to miss another economic opportunity. The Bakken boom would've continued because they would've just gotten the sand elsewhere.
That's why the DFL is #WrongForMinnesota
Comment 3 by Chad Q at 17-Dec-14 07:50 AM
The DFL's stupidity is why there are frac sand mines and shipping stations popping up all over western Wisconsin. The DFL will do whatever it takes to stifle economic growth in the state if it does not go along with their donors green environmental ideology.
Comment 4 by Gary Gross at 17-Dec-14 10:31 AM
BINGO! The DFL is totally beholden to the environmental activist wing of their party.
Potter's transparency issues
"Open" And "Transparent" Need To Be More Than Just Words
by Silence Dogood
Most Deans regularly meet with Department Chairs and Program Directors within their school or college to pass on information from the administration. In some cases, these meetings are called "Dean's Advisory Councils" or DACs. However, these meetings are not intended to replace Meet and Confer meetings between the Administration and the Faculty Association, which are contractually described in the "Master Agreement" between the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Board of Trustees and the Inter Faculty Organization.
On November 5th, 2014, Dean Mark Springer held his weekly DAC meeting with the Department Chairs/Program Directors of the College of Liberal Arts and the School of the Arts. Two budget documents were shared at this meeting. A portion of the 'notes' from the meeting is reproduced below.
The second spreadsheet, which was reportedly produced by Academic Affairs, is reproduced below:
The date on the top of the form is 10/16/14. This document shows where the administration is planning to make some of the cuts to the budget for each of the schools and colleges to respond to the $9,542,000 budget shortfall for FY15.
This document came to light when the notes and handouts for the November 5th, 2014 DAC meeting were emailed to faculty in the College of Liberal Arts and the School of the Arts on December 10th, 2014. The first question is why should it take five weeks to get this information out to the faculty. It is important to note that there were several DAC meetings in the meantime so one has to wonder why the delay?
However, the second and more important question is why was this information was not shared by the administration at Meet and Confer or a Budget Advisory Group Meeting? Why, instead, was it shared at a DAC meeting? There was a Meet and Confer on October 30th, 2014 and Budget Advisory Group Meeting on November 13th, 2014. There was even a Budget Town Hall meeting on November 20th, 2014. As a side note, the slides from the Budget Town Hall meeting are still not available on the SharePoint website as promised during the meeting.
The Meet and Confer scheduled for November 20th, 2014 was cancelled because of the lack of items for the agenda. So there have been multiple opportunities for the administration to share their ideas about how to deal with the budget shortfall. Unfortunately, most faculty have had to find out about these cuts from a DAC meeting and not via the appropriate way to share this important information, which is through Meet and Confer. Sharing this information is not just a good idea, it is, in fact, required by the Master Agreement because the Faculty Association has the contractual right to respond before the Administration acts on matters like budget cuts. Unfortunately, responding becomes something of a moot point when you hear about it more than five weeks after the fact and the decisions have already been implemented.
Last November, SCSU participated in a Trust Index Survey conducted by the Great Place to Work Institute. Suffice it to say that the results for the senior administration were not outstanding, to say the least. The results of two of the questions are shown below. The blue bar represents the score of those taking the survey and the red bar represents an average of the "100 Best Places to Work."
The second question does not have a comparison because it was a question that was generated locally. The results demonstrate "management" does a poor job of informing the "company" and management does a poor job of sharing information openly and transparently.
Clearly, what was found to be true a year ago seems to still be true today. This is also despite a year of "listening sessions" and working group meetings. The administration still seems to give lip service to the concepts of being "Open" and "Transparent." Unfortunately, their lip service does not seem to translate into action.
A wise person once told me:
Posted Wednesday, December 17, 2014 8:44 PM
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