Until the newly reapportioned boundaries of Senate District 31 take effect, the Auraria campus – officially known as the Auraria Higher Education Center or “AHEC” – is located in my district. Last year I worked with Rep. Crisanta Duran on a bill to help keep Auraria students participating on certain advisory boards for the campus. AHEC is also located within the boundaries of her House District 5. This year we’re again carrying legislation to help the campus run smoothly.
HB 1081 corrects certain oversights in a bill from 2010 that granted “flexibility” to public institutions of higher education in Colorado. This flexibility legislation was specifically intended to allow colleges and universities deal with declining state funding, an unfortunate budgetary circumstance that continues to get worse. Colorado is now one of the lowest states in the country for funding higher education. Tuition and fees have gone up while state funding has steadily declined. “Flexibility” to ease certain mandates and procedures has helped our colleges and universities cope and keeps fee increases from going even higher.
When the 2010 legislation was written, AHEC was inadvertantly left out. AHEC serves three institutions on one campus: the Community College of Denver, Metropolitan State College of Denver and the University of Colorado at Denver. Each of these individual institutions was given “flexibility” to help keep costs down, but on the Auraria campus, many of the services where they could avoid state mandates, such as procurement, are handled jointly for all three institutions by AHEC. But AHEC wasn’t given the same flexibility. HB 1081 treats AHEC fairly and gives it the ability to manage the campus with the same flexibility each institution was individually granted. Seems simple, but it takes a lengthy bill to correct the omission.
