New Spending Bills
The House and Senate leadership have agreed to send new spending bills, including a new higher education finance bill, to the Governor. Late yesterday these bills were presented and voted out of the Senate Rules Committee. Legislative leaders plan that the Senate will begin floor debate starting at 10 AM this morning. Once a bill has passed the Senate it will then have House floor action. The plan is that all of the bills will arrive in the Governor’s office yet today. The Governor will then have until Saturday midnight to sign or veto the bills.
The new higher education finance bill has several changes from the conference committee report that was vetoed. Below are the items that impact the University of Minnesota:
Funding:
About $6 million (above the vetoed bill) is added to the 2008 appropriation.
About $7 million is removed (compared to the vetoed bill) from the 2009 appropriation.
Therefore the funding for the University is $1million less for the 2008-2009 biennium than in the vetoed bill.
Because the University receives $ 7 million less in 2009, that reduces the funding level for the 2010-2011 biennium by $14 million, as is would have been given the vetoed bill. (It is still a net gain for the base in the 2010-2011 biennium.) One of the reasons the Governor stated for vetoing the higher education funding bill was that is was $95 million dollars more than his administration’s budget recommendations in the 2010-2011 budget period. This is one of the first years that there has been so much focus on the impact budget decisions of one biennium will have on future biennium budgets.
1% of the appropriation or about $6 million is tied to performance funding. Five measures are defined in this new bill. If the University meets 3 of 5 performance measures then the University receives the $6 million. This is a provision that was in the Governor’s budget proposal; however the legislature had not accepted this proposal and had little discussion on this issue. Again, this is an issue of importance to the Governor, so the legislators are attempting to meet his concern.
Overall the level of spending for all of higher education for this biennium is almost the same as the vetoed bill. However it does reduce the spending for all of higher education for the 2010-20011 budgets a total of $20 million. Even with this $20 million reduction, the bill will have $70 million more than the Governor in these out years of 2010-2011.
