Washington State University President Sam Smith Friday welcomed new proposals from the state's higher education governing body on how to divvy up Spokane between WSU and Eastern Washington University.

The preliminary recommendations from the Higher Education Coordinating Board improve on legislative solutions, Smith said in statement released Friday, by eliminating the president's major disappointment with bills being sponsored by Sens. Jim West, R-Spokane, and Eugene Prince, R-Thornton.

In the West-Prince bill, Spokane's Joint Center For Higher Education is disbanded and most of the buildings in the educational cooperative transferred to WSU. That leaves the center's research program, the Spokane Intercollegiate Research & Technology Institute, without a home.

West, in a separate bill, solves this problem by turning SIRTI into an independent agency.

During hearings on the two bills Smith testified in favor of most of the plans. "The only concern is that the SIRTI property and budget are not transferred to WSU," Smith wrote in Friday's statement, noting the combined chambers of commerce of Spokane have testified that WSU should be the lead institution for SIRTI.

In its preliminary recommendations to be acted on during a Feb. 13 meeting in Spokane, the HEC board would fold SIRTI, with its property, into WSU's existing research programs.

Those recommendations, Smith wrote, "are favorable to our goals in Spokane."

In his statement, Smith pledged to produce plans requested by the HEC board for future management of education in Spokane.