By Beth Silver
Arizona Daily Wildcat
PHOENIX Ä Three bills in the Legislature which student lobbyists and the Arizona Board of Regents said would have hurt the university were on their deathbeds in the House yesterday.
The House Public Institutions and Universities Committee heard testimony on giving national guard members tuition waivers, limiting the number of credit hours students can take and decentralizing the board of regents.
Chairman Rep. Joe Hart, R-Kingman, sent two bills to subcommittees. With only a week left of House committee hearings, the bills are essentially dead, said Paul Allvin, Arizona Students' Association executive director.
"I think referring them to subcommittee was a nice way of killing them," Allvin said. "That allows all parties to sit down and further the discussion more, but it doesn't take them off track of getting approval of the whole Legislature."
Regents were against the national guard tuition waivers because there was no funding, which would have forced the universities to pay for the free tuition, regents spokeswoman Suzanne Pfister said in the hearing.
And limiting students to 31 units over their major requirement, as the bill's sponsor Rep. Jean McGrath, R-Glendale, proposed, would hurt community college transfer students, double majors and anyone else who takes "a few classes over," Allvin said to the committee.
The third bill, which would have split the board of regents into three boards, one for each of the state universities, was not heard mid
and is not scheduled for the committee's final hearing for new bills.
Hart relegated the issues to reluctant state lawmakers who were to study them in subcommittees. But with only a week left before the deadline to send all House bills to the Senate, and vice versa, getting the bills a second hearing is virtually impossible.
Hart said in the committee that the bills would not have had enough support to pass through his committee if they were voted on yesterday.