Lisa Maue

Guest contributor

“Times are hard right now; there is no doubt about it,” said ENMU Portales President Steven G. Gamble at ENMU-Ruidoso last week. “I don’t call this a crisis. I’ve been in a crisis before in higher education—several as a matter of fact—and this is not one of them. If you ask me in a year if we go through similar cuts next year, then I’d say, yes, we are pretty close to a crisis. If it is three years out and we are still making budget cuts, then I would say we are sincerely in a crisis. We are in a tough budget year right now. Not just for this campus but for every campus in the state.”

Gamble was on campus to update faculty and staff on decisions made during this year’s legislative session regarding higher education, in general, and the ENMU system, in particular.

“I’m not here today to tell you how to prosper during hard times, because for the next couple years, you don’t have a prayer of prospering,” said Gamble. “Neither does Portales. I will talk to you about how to tread water and not drown. Some schools now are drowning. Ruidoso and Roswell and Portales are not one of them.”

The state cut the higher education portion of the budget by 2.5 percent. The decision came as a surprise to many, not only for the amount, but in the timing.

“Up until two weeks left in the session, we thought we were going to get out of there with about what we went in with,” explained Gamble. “But in those two weeks, they got new gross receipts numbers that showed that they were down dramatically in gross receipts. They got a new estimate on natural gas. It wasn’t the oil that pulled them down. Everyone knew oil was going down. It was the natural gas that really cratered as well. So, without any opportunity for discussion or conversation, they made the budget cuts.”

A provision was also passed that would allow Governor Martinez the discretion to reopen the budget and make cuts up to $60 million that do not require the legislature’s approval.

“So if the revenues don’t come in or the expenses go higher than they thought and it can be covered up to 60 million, she can come in and cut,” said Gamble. “She can’t cut any state agency more than 1.5 percent. So, in other words, it will be mostly across the board. A lot of people, including myself, think that is probably what is going to happen. She might need only to cut $20 million, $30 million, $40 million. If it goes above $60 million, then they have to go into special session and, with the governor, decide what further cuts must be made.”

The provision means that, for the next few weeks, budgets for ENMU Portales and Ruidoso are not etched in stone. The governor has until March 8 to sign legislation.

According to Gamble, the attitude towards higher education in Santa Fe is positive, but not necessarily a priority.

“We have a lot of things here in the state under federal mandates, everything from highways to K-12 education that need to be taken care of,” said Gamble. “Medicare went way up this year, but we had to fund it. It is 4-to-1 dollar match. We are crazy not to. So when the dust clears, despite the fact that they understand that they need a good higher education establishment to go forward, when they start looking at places to cut the budget, they start at the bottom and that’s where we are.”

Even if higher education receives no more cuts, with more people leaving New Mexico than coming in, the challenge for higher education is great.

ENMU-Ruidoso has experienced a 31.7 percent decline in enrollment over the past three years — an ugly figure — but Gamble pointed out that when times are hard, it is natural to believe that everyone else is doing better. Referring to a chart documenting enrollment numbers for the past 3 years for selected state community colleges, the numbers were grim across the board. That enrollment is down just about everywhere has important ramifications for recruitment.

“You drive 60 miles to get to Alamogordo and you think maybe we can draw some people from there. But NMSU-Alamogordo has lost 40 percent of its enrollment in 3 years. So okay, let’s go to Roswell: it is a big city and surely they must be prospering, but they are down 36 percent. What I’m saying is that things are tough all over, and it’s really hard to understand where you are in the overall picture without seeing who your peers are.”

Despite the dim news, Gamble was optimistic for the future. Reading from a speech from 2006, shortly after the Ruidoso Instructional Center was awarded branch community college status by the legislature, Gamble stressed that, given the ups and downs, little has changed:

“’ENMU Ruidoso cannot be all things to all people, but can be a lot of things to the citizens of this area. We can have good relationships with public schools, community businesses and the Mescalero Apache Tribe. Eastern’s best days are ahead of us but it is going to take hard work to get there and it will some take time. But we will grow in reputation as time goes by and the more support we can get internally and externally within the institution and the community, the stronger we will be.’ That still holds true. Good times are still ahead of us.”

Unfortunately, for many in the audience, even this optimism was tempered when the respected and beloved Gamble said that he had announced to the Board of Regents that he would be retiring in the summer of 2017.