3.24.2009

Budget Updates from the Senate and the Governor

Today, the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee voted in its amendments to the Governor's originally proposed budget.  Members approved a base budget cut of $5.4 million and a fund balance cut of $4 million.  This $9.4 million cut is less than half of the proposed $20.8 million cut from the House ($10.8 budget, $10 fund balance).

Both committee reports have maintained the expectation that the Board of Regents will still support a tuition freeze, despite cuts that will likely erode quality.

In the Governor's amended budget today, he cut the original $16.9 million from the base budget that would support the tuition freeze.  In its place, he has filled the $16.9 million hole with two years of funding from the federal stimulus package.  The upside of this proposal is that there will be full-funding of the budget and tuition freeze for two years.  The downside is that after two years, a larger-than-normal hole will open up that will need to be filled by state dollars in FY2012.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It is IMPERATIVE that the Board of Regents does not support a budget that fails to address an increase in tuition. Why can't legislators see how detrimental this would be to quality of education in MD? Who cares about a tuition freeze when quality would be hit so hard, especially in MD's growth schools? If we can't maintain a fully-funded tuition freeze, would it really be that horrible if schools increased tuition by as little as $100 per student? - think about how much this would help.