CHEYENNE Wyo.

A proposal to restore the Wyoming Community College Commission's ability to scuttle education programs a power held solely by colleges' boards of trustees for the past seven years promises to stir up debate when a legislative committee meets next week.

Jo Anne McFarland, president of Central Wyoming College in Riverton, said Thursday that college trustees are perfectly capable of doing away with unpopular programs on their own and don't need help from the state agency.

"The assumption that local governing boards lack the will to terminate nonviable instructional programs flies in the face of history," McFarland said, adding that trustees at Central Wyoming College have voted to end two programs surgical technology and a physical therapy assistant program in recent years.

Yet a draft bill before the Joint Education Interim Committee, which meets in Casper on Monday and Tuesday, would give the Wyoming Community College Commission even more power than doing away with programs. Commissioners also could consolidate programs among schools or move them from school to school powers the governor-appointed panel, which right now is more of a coordinating body than a governing one, has not had before.

The changes in the bill were drawn from 35 recommendations made by a panel that looked at how to improve Wyoming's community colleges. Gov. Dave Freudenthal appointed the Commission on Community Colleges in the spring and the panel met five times over the spring and summer.

The recommendations were made in an August report.

Tex Boggs, president of Western Wyoming Community College in Rock Springs and chairman of the Commission on Community Colleges, said the bill would give the Wyoming Community College Commission as useful new function.

"It helps ensure that when programs are no longer beneficial to the citizens of Wyoming, they're considered for termination," Boggs said. "That consideration has value, I think, for any bureaucracy."