Local GCC board members want to tell the truth

Connection Editorial

It may come as a surprise to the students of Gila Community College (GCC) to learn that the tuition they pay to attend classes shows up as exactly zero dollars in the GCC budget.

The obvious question is how is that possible? Where does the money go?
It turns out that because GCC is a provisional college, reliant on Eastern Arizona College (EAC) for accreditation, the money is channeled to EAC’s budget. EAC then issues credits back to GCC. The upshot being that GCC ends up getting to use the money, but doesn’t report it in its budget.

To their credit, that didn’t sit well with Payson Campus GCC board members Tom Loeffler and Dr. Larry Stephenson at the last GCC board meeting. The issue came up as the board prepared to release its Truth in Taxation notice for publication in local newspapers.

The proposed budget for GCC is $4.5 million, and the credits the college will receive for tuition payments amount to some $1.5 million. That is a significant chunk of money to leave off the books, and Loeffler and Stephenson were clearly uneasy about it.

“If we’re publishing a limit of $4.5 million, and that doesn’t include tuition, we’re not being truthful,” said Stephenson.

Loeffler noted that there were three revenue streams available to the college: state aid, tuition, and grants/tax levies.

“If the purpose of the Truth in Taxation form is to disclose our spending, we’re fibbing to the taxpayers of Gila County if it only captures two of the three revenue streams,” he said.

Unfortunately, it is a rare thing for public officials to make such a concerted effort to keep the public informed with honest calculations on government expenditures. This has been especially true when it comes to the murky world of GCC budget projections.

We appreciate the efforts made by Loeffler and Stephenson to untangle the financial picture at GCC, and their attempts to deliver accurate information to the tax payers in Gila County.

“Citizens should know the true total cost of running their college,” Loeffler argued.

Board President Bob Ashford was initially reluctant to add the information to the public notification.

“It would be misleading to show tuition since we don’t collect it,” he said.

That may be true to a point, but the financial credits the college receives from EAC does amount to money being spent, and Loeffler and Stephenson effectively made the case that to omit it would distort the picture of how much money was being spent to run GCC.

Ashford put in a call to EAC Chief Business Officer Tim Curtis to get his opinion. Curtis was clearly against the idea of reporting tuition as revenue for GCC, apparently because if they did, those revenues would show up on both EAC’s and GCC’s balance sheets.

That does sound like a problem, but the answer is not to simply ignore the fact that GCC is spending more money that it is reporting.

Stephenson offered to contact the state office of the auditor general to get an opinion on the matter. Unable to wait for clarification before the deadline passes for posting the budget to the public, the board eventually voted to approve the statement with a footnote that states that the totals in the budget do not include some $1.5 million in credits.

It’s a start. We hope the financial data regarding GCC’s budget will one day be as transparent as the public deserves for it to be.