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There’s an update to the proposed Colorado law to limit the money that allows Native Americans to study at Fort Lewis College without paying tuition: the bill is dead.
According to an article at In Denver Times, Colorado State Representative Karen Middleton, who proposed the bill, is giving up:
Middleton announced at a Capitol news conference on Friday that, “I will kill this bill.” The measure, House Bill 10-1067, is on the House Education Committee calendar for Monday afternoon.
“This was never meant to be a direct impact on Native Americans,” said Middleton, who blamed part of the controversy on “misleading” media coverage. “I want to set the record straight.”
Middleton is right. Articles about the Colorado bill often said that Middleton’s proposal would end the tuition agreement with Native Americans, implying that if her bill passed native students would be forced to pay tuition to attend Fort Lewis College. Not exactly.
It’s actually a reasonably simple budgeting issue. Currently, tuition at Fort Lewis is $16,060 a year. By virtue of a 1911 treaty between the Ute Indians and the U.S. Department of the Interior, Colorado currently pays $16,060 to Fort Lewis for every Native American student who attends the school.
Middleton’s bill would have allowed the state to compensate Fort Lewis at the actual cost of instruction, about $13,271 a year.
While this change could have been very damaging to the college’s finances, Native American students would still have been able to attend Fort Lewis College without paying tuition.
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Michael Kelly on January 25, 2010 1:17 AM:
Here's the issue with the bill. The students of Fort Lewis actually understand what this bill is. It's a $1.8 million cut from the general fund of Fort Lewis. We understand that the cut would not only effect Native American students, but does everyone else understand that it would effect every singe student, faculty member and department at Fort Lewis. The state has already proposed $4.2 million in cuts for the college (the second highest in the state), while C.U. and C.S.U. would be receiving state funding increases. The only reason the bill was named with the terms "Native American Tuition Waiver" was to put opposing viewpoints of the waiver up against each other in justification of the bill, and to confuse the public about the real intent of the bill. The so-called "cost of instruction" has never actually been defined. The bill was not even announced to anyone at Fort Lewis by anyone from the Colorado State government. Still seem like a necessary budget cut?