PHOENIX - One year and $440 million changed the tone but not the message as President Peter Likins asked legislators to help fight key problems, like faculty retention and enrollment growth, that threaten the UA.

Last year, Likins gave a scathing speech to the House Committee on Appropriations in which he lambasted them for two consecutive years of budget cuts and their plans to cut again.

Yesterday, Likins graciously thanked legislators for their $440 million commitment to build new university research facilities and their ability to avoid cutting the 2004 budget, calling it a "turnaround year" at the UA.

"One year ago, I felt the extent of severe strain under the pressures of what seemed to be a

potentially devastating financial crisis," Likins said to the committee. "Last year, the process was painful, but the outcome was greatly gratifying."

Likins called on the committee to support the governor's budget proposal, which would bring nearly $17 million to the UA, and asked them to recognize the unique funding necessities of each university under the Focused Excellence plan.

"The state of Arizona should have a set of universities that are differentiated sufficiently in their mission so that ... individually, they can focus on what they do best. And what we do best is generate the research dollars ... and that's why the key request for us is the key personnel retention fund," Likins said.

Likins said the university will continue to lose valuable research professors without the $4.2 million for key faculty retention and $9 million for employee raises set aside in the governor's budget.

"We somehow need to hang on to our people," Likins said. "Those are the people that are key to our strategy. It is the researchers that are key for us."

Forty-nine professors, who left the UA last year for better pay, had brought in $68.4 million over the past three years, Likins said. While Likins spent most of the time talking about the importance of state funding in retaining key faculty, he also asked legislators to protect the $3.6 million the governor has asked for to help accommodate enrollment growth at the UA.

Likins said that changes made because of Focused Excellence were successful in helping the school operate under a flat budget, but not without chopping programs and merging others.

"We've had some dramatic actions taken to right ourselves in this turbulent storm, and in this process, last spring, we had to put a budget together for the current year," Likins said.

One suggestion to help meet each school's differing funding needs is changing the standard enrollment-based funding equation used for the state's universities, allowing ASU to use the old formula but making UA's system performance-based.

"We have very little additional growth capacity, and we need to make sure that as we develop a strategy going forward, that we can get better without getting bigger," Likins said. "With performance measures, we can continue to get better and earn your continued investment."

Rep. Phil Lopes, D-Tucson, said the UA's record tuition hikes were an "ill-advised approach" to gaining revenue, and that he worried that the state's universities were not offering an education that lived up to the state's promise of a "free or nearly free" college education. House Appropriations chairman Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, suggested that in-state UA students live at home and get a job instead of depending on financial aid generated by the tuition hike.

"May I suggest that maybe these students stay at home, live at home and work for a living like a lot of us did," Pearce said.

The Joint Legislative Budget Committee has suggested that universities stay at current levels in their budget proposal, which Senate President Ken Bennett, R-Prescott, called a blueprint that may or may not end up with room for money for the schools.

UA lobbyist Greg Fahey said that he remains confident that the Legislature will support the needs outlined in the governor's budget.

"I am not wild about the word 'blueprint' because a blueprint sort of does show you the contours of the finished product. It's just sort of a skeleton, and I am hoping this is more like the floor, and now we're going to put up the walls and the roof," Fahey said.