No need to worry, they’ve said. Funding for higher education institutions will flow in Louisiana’s newly proposed executive budget just as it did before.
If this is the narrative pushed by Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration, why is everyone at the University so concerned?
Because if one were to actually look through and research the technical, vague and highly preliminary executive budget, our governor’s number-crunchers could almost convince you this was true.
But if any single statement were to ring above the rest in Jindal’s proposed budget, it would be this: “There is no change to the funding for Higher Education schools after adjusting for…”
Adjusting for what? Higher education’s routinely distributed midyear cut of $22 million, of course. Last year, $3.4 million of this cut hit the University, though that number has been far greater in the past.
And it’ll be up to the presiding Board of Regents to decide how to dole out the dirty laundry next time around.
The dialogue surrounding the executive budget, which was released Friday, is a rope in tug-of-war between two factions pretending to be on the same team.
Our governor’s administration will stop at nothing to distract from the fact that education and healthcare are still the only viable places to cut in our state’s dilapidated budget — despite the rosiness of granting us the autonomy to increase tuition so we can patch holes they gave us in the first place.
And yet, on the other end, administrators at the University play doomsayer in hopes of wooing the banker, all while surely awaiting better days once this — likely predetermined — system reorganization and transition follows through.
So if the funding for higher education isn’t changing, as the Capitol says, why was $223 million removed from a fund called Total Interagency Transfers within the higher education budget?
That $223 million within Interagency Transfers accounts for the funding of numerous public hospitals within the state’s university systems awaiting public-private partnerships, according to Assistant Commissioner for Policy and Communications Michael DiResto, and the plans thereof have transferred these funds to the Department of Health and Hospitals.
And if the listed shortfall within higher education’s total budget rests at $209 million, i.e., less than $223 million, why did Sen. Dan Claitor, interim member of the Senate’s finance committee, say, “LSU is on the cusp of losing its tier-one status”?
Because both sides of this tug-of-war are correct.
Spokesmen for Jindal’s administration are exactly right: Funding for higher education most likely will remain the same — the same meaning continued midyear cuts relegated to the Board of Regents’ distribution authority. Fiscal-year budgets will continue to be fiscal-half-year budgets.
The University hasn’t seen a dependable budget in years, and no comments from the Jindal administration should persuade you otherwise. Not changing higher education funding means retaining its volatile form.
