[media-credit name=’SUNDEEP MALLADI/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]Speaking before 16 members of the state Legislature's most powerful committee Thursday, leaders of the University of Wisconsin System defended a generous budget proposed by Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle.

Doyle has offered more than $225 million toward higher education in his two-year budget, about $21.5 million of which would directly support the system's Growth Agenda.

One of the most contentious proposals would give all domestic partners of state workers — including system staff and faculty — access to health-insurance benefits. UW System President Kevin Reilly estimated the new benefits could cost roughly $1.3 million annually.

Reilly and David Walsh, president of the Board of Regents, said the benefits would greatly help the system recruit and retain high-profile faculty.

"I happen to think in terms of human fairness, it's also the right thing to do, but whether you agree with that or not, it's a clear economic factor that we have to deal with," Reilly said. "In a place like Madison, it's very significant."

UW-Madison is the only Big Ten school that does not offer the benefit, and, according to Reilly, the school's number of recruitment hits — schools that recruit faculty from UW — has doubled in the last several years.

Reilly said UW's retaining track record has fallen from 80 percent in the past to 57 percent this year.

"We want to have the best teachers in the classrooms for our kids," Reilly said. "We want to have the best researchers in the laboratory, so they can help bring that large amount of money in from the federal government and other places … to Wisconsin."

Some members of the Joint Finance Committee echoed Reilly's call for better recruiting and retaining tools, but others questioned whether the system really deserves such a large amount of funding.

State Rep. Robin Vos, R-Racine, said some press coverage of the system's poor financial decisions — such as abandoning a $28.4 million software project — has cast doubt in some of his constituents.

"What are the steps that you are doing to actually try to instill confidence in the public so that they will have the ability to tell us to reinvest in the university?" Vos said.

Reilly and Walsh discussed past mistakes and outlined current steps to reform system policies in reaction to legislative criticism last year.

"We made those changes because we saw something that was broken and we fixed it," Walsh said.

Other committee members, like state Sen. Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, probed the system leaders on efforts to keep graduates in Wisconsin.

"What concerns me is that we will end up being a donor state," Olsen said. "It's not merely enough to graduate more students."

Olsen urged Reilly and Walsh to find new ways to work with businesses to halt the "brain drain," a theory that more college graduates are choosing jobs out of Wisconsin after completing their schooling.

"You're going to drive us into bankruptcy," Olsen said. "What is [the growth plan] going to do to create jobs? It'll create workers, but they're pretty mobile."

Reilly and Walsh said research shows that Wisconsin suffers more from recruiting young professionals from other states than actually keeping its own graduates.

"The people that leave here come back, but nobody's coming from Illinois," Walsh said.

After grilling other agency heads all day, Joint Finance Committee members were relatively calm while they questioned the system leaders. That is, until Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, took the microphone.

Suder repeatedly lambasted the administrators for supporting several of Doyle's more controversial budget proposals for the UW System and also criticized several system decisions.

"Why should the Legislature spend one more dime on the UW System given the type of annual spending craze and other less-than-productive items that we've seen in the past two years?" Suder said before glaring at the administrators and other committee members.

Reilly and Walsh responded harshly, scorning Suder for not returning phone calls and invitations to discuss his concerns. Suder returned a similar complaint, saying the system needs to work on improving communication.