Friday News Roundup: Week of February 13-17

Wisconsin budget committee approves $123 million in cuts

Mississippi senators OK new budget rule

Florida senate panel reduces USF cut, but it still stands at $103 million

Ohio budget plan calls for 5 area colleges to share in $41M

Wisconsin budget committee approves $123 million in cuts
The Joint Finance Committee in the Wisconsin legislature voted this week to cut $123 million from the state government in fiscal year 2013, more than a third of which – $46 million – comes from the University of Wisconsin System. The legislature’s two-year budget passed last year included spending cuts of $250 million for the university system; the budget included the additional $123 million in cuts, but did not specify how they would be applied. The $46 million spending reduction for the university system will come on top of last year’s $250 million reduction included in the biennial budget, and must be in place by July. According to university officials, the Madison campus will bear the biggest cut of $17.3 million, followed by the Milwaukee campus at $6.2 million. Even with the new cuts in place, the legislature will have to deal with another $143 million shortfall by mid-2013. More here…

Mississippi senators OK new budget rule
The Mississippi legislature this week approved a budget rule that will make it harder for lawmakers to increase spending for education and other programs for a four-year period that started in January 2012. Throughout the recession, legislators debated whether to augment funding for agencies with funds from the state’s financial reserves. The new measure will require lawmakers to identify spending cuts from other agencies to make room for new funding for a particular program. Legislators cannot request funds from the rainy day fund, even if it holds hundreds of millions of dollars. In addition to constraining the process by which lawmakers fund education and other programs, which typically includes an agreement between House and Senate leaders as to how much money they can allocate from the state’s financial reserves to the fiscal year budget, one lawmaker argued that lawmakers without a spot on a House or Senate budget committee would have “zero input” on the budget process. More here…

Florida senate panel reduces USF cut, but it still stands at $103 million
Florida senators approved a budget plan this week that cuts allocations to the University of South Florida (USF) by $103 million for fiscal year 2013. The Senate’s proposed cuts are deep across state universities, but USF, which stands to lose about 40 percent of its total fiscal year 2012 funds, will take the biggest hit. The proposal would cut funding across the state’s 11 universities by between 12 and 34 percent, and at USF by an additional $24 million as the Senate tries to close USF Polytechnic and divert the funds to creating a new university in Polk County. The proposal initially included another $25 million for the new university, but that provision was removed from the bill. The House has also proposed cuts to the university system, but on a much smaller scale; under that bill, USF would see about a 9 percent reduction from 2012 levels. More here…

Ohio budget plan calls for 5 area colleges to share in $41M
Ohio’s Higher Education Capital Funding Commission this week submitted a fiscal year 2014 budget proposal to Ohio Governor John Kasich requesting funds for capital projects. The seven-member committee comprised partially of several state university presidents was asked to cooperate in designing a budget proposal that postsecondary institutions could present as a united request for funding, rather than individual requests. The presidents of all 37 Ohio public universities and community colleges signed onto the budget plan. The proposal includes various construction and renovation projects, the biggest of which is a $50 million engineering building at Ohio State University. The priority areas the Commission agreed to would devote $208 million to renovation and maintenance; $97 million for engineering and science buildings; $30 million for workforce development; and $15 million for public-private partnership projects. According to state officials, Governor Kasich will also likely add additional funding for statewide projects before submitting the capital budget to the legislature. More here…