General Assembly lawmakers rebuke college presidents - Michael Martz , Richmond Times-Dispatch

The last day of the 2016 General Assembly session began badly for presidents and other representatives of Virginia’s public colleges and universities, who were rebuked by top leaders of the House Appropriations Committee for attempting to prevent the pending two-year state budget from limiting the institutions’ ability to raise student tuition. Appropriations Chairman Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, and Majority Leader Kirk Cox, R-Colonial Heights, chairman of the higher education subcommittee, delivered the private scolding to a half-dozen presidents, as well as other representatives of almost every public college or university in the state. It focused on what they perceived as an attempt by “several” university presidents to bypass them in order to undercut a proposed 3 percent cap on tuition increases, despite a House budget proposal that was much more generous to higher education than either the Senate or Gov. Terry McAuliffe had offered. http://www.roanoke.com/news/politics/general_assembly/general-assembly-lawmakers-rebuke-college-presidents/article_deb432fa-96c7-5131-a35b-8014ed7fb2ab.html