Stunned by the news that funding for an education center in his district was cut from Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s proposed budget, and frustrated by spending priorities that he says favor other regions of the state, a Republican legislator from Southside on Thursday called the plan “tone-deaf.”
“Areas [of Virginia] that helped get the governor elected are being left on the side of the road,” Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County, said of his fellow Republican.
Stanley said he had been assured by the governor’s chief of staff several weeks before the budget proposal’s debut on Wednesday that the New College Institute would receive ample funding for the next two fiscal years. In fact, though, while the plan allots nearly $4.7 million to NCI in 2025, it provides nothing at all in 2026.
The higher education center in Martinsville, which has struggled to find its footing in recent years amid leadership churn and pandemic disruptions, will also need to present a “comprehensive business plan and customer recruitment and expansion strategy” to the governor and the General Assembly by Oct. 1, 2024.
Stanley was shocked. “I’m dismayed. It’s not what I had been told” by the governor’s office, he said Thursday.
Stanley said he knew that NCI would need to submit a business plan to the state, but he expected it to be due by the end of 2024. He didn’t have any indication, he said, that funding might be withheld.
The governor’s spokesperson responded to questions about the funding cut with a statement late Thursday.
“The New College Institute has a new executive director this year and the state budget requests a plan for how the New College Institute will achieve its mission to prepare students for careers under new leadership before final funding decisions are made for state fiscal year 2026,” Macaulay Porter said in the statement.
She did not respond to a follow-up question about why the governor’s plan didn’t match up with what Stanley was expecting.
NCI, which hosts college courses as well as job training classes, has typically received about $4.5 million from the state in recent fiscal years.
The fall 2024 deadline for NCI to submit its business plan for review indicates that funding for 2026 will be in limbo through the legislative session in early 2025, when it would be up to lawmakers to pass a budget amendment supporting the institute.
Without a promise of future funding, NCI may not have the cash to implement some of the strategies it announced this year to foster growth and sustainability. Its philanthropic arm is holding onto about $13 million following a February rebrand, when it announced an expanded mission to support education endeavors throughout the Martinsville and Henry County area. The state attorney general’s office has warned the foundation not to spend any money raised for NCI on outside projects, but it’s unclear when a long-term agreement about who gets control of the money will be reached.
Stanley said a bipartisan group of lawmakers from both chambers of the General Assembly is working to draft an amendment to “correct the error” he sees in the governor’s budget, though he wouldn’t say which lawmakers are involved. He said the group is “willing to fight” for NCI.
When the COVID-19 pandemic forced many academic programs to convert to virtual options, critics of the education center questioned NCI’s role for Martinsville and surrounding Henry County.
The Virginia Office of the Inspector General published an audit of NCI’s activities in April that called out NCI for dwindling enrollment in the higher education programs housed there, and directed the institute to implement systems to allow it to more easily share the results of its programming and outreach efforts.
But energy at NCI’s Martinsville campus got a jolt this year as a new executive director, Joe Sumner, arrived in February. The institute signed an agreement with the Wendell Scott Foundation to provide STEM-focused K-12 programming. It installed a training simulator for use by students at the Piedmont Criminal Justice Training Academy. And Dominion Energy told the institute in November that it plans to send its employees there for wind turbine training programs. The institute also hired a data management specialist in response to the OIG’s audit directives.
[Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]
Stanley said that he and NCI board vice chair Richard Hall had met with the governor’s staff to talk about the progress the institute has made to increase access to career training opportunities since hiring Sumner. But the governor, who campaigned on promises to create thousands of new and better-paying jobs, hasn’t visited NCI since he took office, Stanley said.
NCI is one of five higher education centers in Southwest and Southside Virginia. While individual state colleges and the community college system are required to submit six-year strategic plans every other year, the higher education centers don’t go through the same process.
Though the General Assembly typically works off the governor’s proposed budget in crafting the biennium, Stanley wrote it off, calling the budget proposal dead on arrival.
He said that elements of the governor’s budget proposal like the proposed sales tax increase, the elimination of the car tax and cuts to education funding will disproportionately hurt rural and inner-city residents. Stanley says he supports the governor, but “I’m shaking my head on this one.”
Stanley is currently the only legislator representing Martinsville. Del. Les Adams, R-Pittsylvania County and an NCI board member, recently announced his resignation from the House. Del. Wren Williams, R-Patrick County, represents part of Henry County and also sits on the NCI board of directors.
