The University may be spared from furloughs and construction postponements on the new band hall before the end of the academic year.Gov. Bobby Jindal outlined his plan for balancing the budget for this fiscal year Friday. The plan includes a $29.5 million reduction for higher education, with the University’s Baton Rouge campus absorbing $3 million in reductions by June 30.The Revenue Estimating Conference, tasked with predicting the state’s revenues, announced last week the state must cut $319 million from its budget by the end of June, which prompted the governor’s proposal.The University’s proposed share is substantially less than the $11 million Chancellor Michael Martin submitted preliminary plans to cut earlier this month.Savings from a state-mandated spending freeze will cover the University’s share of the cut, avoiding drastic action in the final months of the fiscal year, Martin said in an e-mail. Jindal ordered the partial state spending freeze late last month. Jindal’s plan also proposes no new cuts for higher education despite a new $398 million hole adding to the deficit for the fiscal year ending in June 2011.The proposed plan for filling the new hole for the coming year reiterates the governor’s preliminary budget intention by avoiding funding cuts to higher education.The University has endured about $40 million in funding during the last two years.Jindal said last week further reductions to the coming year’s budget will be introduced as amendments to the proposed budget — formally known as House Bill One — that is being debated today in the House Appropriations Committee.”The plans we are announcing today work to protect critical services by avoiding dramatic reductions in health care and higher education, especially as they are the largest unprotected areas in the budget,” Jindal said Friday in a news release.The administration is projecting to meet the $3 million in required savings by freezing spending on non-academic support expenditures like travel, equipment and supplies, said Robert Kuhn, associate vice chancellor of Budget and Planning.”The governor’s proposal would allow us to protect the academic core, and we will continue to make financial and programmatic efforts … to become a leaner, more focused university,” Martin said Friday in a broadcast e-mail.With the specter of cuts for the coming fiscal year looming as the legislative session progresses, the more pressing issue lately has been dealing with the budget deficit in the current year.A total of $3 million in projected savings from a state mandated spending freeze will save the University from postponing construction on the new band hall and enacting furlough plans the University outlined when the total cut was uncertain.The lower-than-predicted cut is a temporary relief for administrators,  but the University isn’t completely out of danger this fiscal year. The legislature still has to debate, possibly amend and ultimately approve the plan for filling the deficit.The governor’s plan will navigate the legislative course in the form of a supplemental bill.House Speaker Jim Tucker said at his weekly press conference Thursday he hopes to have the hole filled within the next two weeks.Jindal’s plan outlines a total of $10.4 million in cuts to the LSU System with the Baton Rouge campus slated to provide the most savings, according to a reduction plan submitted by the LSU System on Friday.System President John Lombardi heaped praise on the governor’s plan in a statement Friday.”At our academic campuses, students are assured that they will be able to complete their programs of study without interruption,” Lombardi said.Absent from Jindal’s plan was the employment of the $170 million in Rainy Day funds some administrators and legislators speculated could be used to help cover this year’s deficit.Both Jindal and Tucker expressed their concerns about using Rainy Day funds because of the repayment schedule mandated by state rules.–Contact Xerxes A. Wilson at [email protected]