FORT KENT – The University of Maine System board of trustees on Monday unanimously endorsed Chancellor Joseph Westphal’s biennium budget request asking the Legislature for a 12.9 percent increase in state funding in fiscal 2004 and 17.2 percent the year after.

If the request is approved, Westphal wants to freeze in-state undergraduate tuition, expand enrollment and increase financial aid.

Emphasizing that higher education is the key to economic prosperity, Westphal said he would ask the state for an increase of $22.9 million in 2004 and $34.5 million the year after as part of his “aggressive financial plan” to make higher education affordable and accessible.

As part of the budget request, the board is also asking the Legislature to send a $30 million bond to referendum to improve the condition of outdated UMS facilities.

Acknowledging the “cloud of uncertainty created by the state’s ongoing budget crisis,” Jim Mullen, chairman of the board, urged the board to resist the “tremendous temptation to follow the well-trodden old path, cut back on everything and just ride out the fiscal storm.”

Instead, it’s time to hold the state’s feet to the fire, he said during the board meeting at the University of Maine at Fort Kent.

“For education to be the state’s priority, it has to be treated as such in the budget process,” he said.

In the 1970s, the state appropriated between 11 percent and 15 percent of the general revenue fund to the university system, according to Mullen. During this decade the amount dropped to from 6 percent to 9 percent and now stands at just over 7 percent.

“Am I the only one who finds it incongruous that as all of our state leaders point to education as the key to our future, our proportionate share of the state budget has been effectively halved?” he asked.

Westphal said the system would do its share of belt tightening by continuing to freeze faculty and staff positions, by restructuring the budget process so that each campus receives money based on performance and mission, and by creating a strategic plan for facilities management “to make sure we’re spending money on facilities according to mission and purpose.”

The falling stock market has not helped the university’s situation.

UMS Chief Financial Officer Joanne Yestramski said the system has lost 9 percent, or about $10 million, of its endowment in the stock market.

While the fund totaled $87,422,436 last year, it was down to $76,959,363 as of June, she said.

Westphal also has plans for helping prepare K-12 teachers and for stimulating Maine businesses.

His plans also include:

. Giving employees pay raises and having them pay a greater share of health care benefits;

. Improving distance learning;

. Expanding research and development.

Westphal told the group that people mistakenly believe that federal student aid has been keeping pace with tuition increases. But in 1990, while a Pell grant could pay for 80 percent of tuition, in 2000, that was down to 55 percent.

Meanwhile, the percentage of family income needed to pay for tuition has more than doubled, he said.

The UMS request for budget increases comes at a time when Gov. Angus King and the Legislature have been wrestling with a $240 million revenue shortfall for the current biennium.

King said that unless the economy turns around sharply and new revenue becomes available, it will be “exceedingly difficult” for the university system to obtain what they are proposing.

“Given the circumstances for the year, I think something more in line with a cost-of-living increase would be an achievement,” the governor said in an interview.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.