Some West Virginia University officials liked what they heard from Gov. Joe Manchin in his second State of the State address Wednesday (Jan. 11) night, while others say the speech was lacking in specifics on many issues facing higher education.

The governor unveiled a number of new health care and law enforcement initiatives while making several new economic development announcements. He also marked last week’s Sago mine tragedy by paying tribute to the 12 miners who died, and to surviving miner Randal McCloy Jr. who remains hospitalized at Ruby Memorial Hospital .

The mood is certainly different from the past four or five years,said Dave Miller, WVU special assistant for legislative affairs.It’s more positive because there was no talk of budget cuts to higher ed. Our goal is to at least maintain our current funding levels.

The governor’s promise of expanded access to basic health care was good news to WVU Vice President for Health Sciences Dr. Robert D’Alessandri.

Gov. Manchin has been focused on health care since the beginning of his administration, and I applaud his efforts to provide affordable care to all West Virginians . We look forward to working with the administration and the Legislature to improve the health of our state.

He added,The governor recognizes that 18 percent of our citizens have no health care coverage. That is unacceptable for the state and has enormous impact on WVU . The University and its related health care institutions provided about $60 million in uncompensated services to people who could not pay the cost of their health care in the past year.

Leaders of some of WVU ’s various constituency groups had hoped to hear more details from Manchin on particular issues facing higher education.

The speech was geared more toward economic development and not on some of the issues I was hoping he would address,said Paul Martinelli, classified staff representative to the WVU Board of Governors and the Advisory Council of Classified Employees.While I was pleased to hear about many of the economic development initiatives, I was disappointed he didn’t talk more about PEIA , higher education salaries and higher education’s budget.

WVU Staff Council Chair Terry Nebel echoed Martinelli’s views, sayingOverall, there weren’t a lot of details in his speech. I’m more interested in seeing what his budget has in store for us. Will the cuts be stopped? Will previous cuts be restored?

The governor proposed a $4.01 billion general and lottery revenue budget, 5.83 percent higher than the current budget. He also asked the lawmakers to double the size of the state’s rainy day fund to save an amount equal to 10 percent of the annual general revenue budget.

After several consecutive years of higher education budget cuts, WVU officials are hopeful that won’t be the case this time around.

We’ll be looking at the governor’s budget proposal very closely,Miller said.So far, it looks pretty good. But a lot can happen over 60 days. We’re cautiously optimistic.