Tennessee budget cuts could bite higher education

NASHVILLE — Tennessee public colleges and universities could feel the bite of state government’s budget ax as Gov. Phil Bredesen and lawmakers begin slashing the governor’s original 2008-09 budget proposal by as much as $585 million, officials said.

“Higher education almost certainly would have some cuts to go with that,” Gov. Bredesen said earlier this week as he looked at revenue shortfalls.

The governor provided no figures, but is expected to outline budget cuts in a joint address to the House and Senate on May 12.

On Thursday, State Funding Board members made their best estimate of the current year shortfall as well as what next year’s will be.

According to Funding Board estimates, officials must cut $314 million to $384 million out of the current budget, well beyond the $180 million cut Gov. Phil Bredesen projected in February.

For the budget year beginning July 1, the board estimated there will be $468 million to $585 million less than called for in Gov. Bredesen’s original spending plan.

Gov. Bredesen already has said budget cuts include making “serious” layoffs of regular state employees as well as no pay raises.

He also has said he intends, at least for now, to fund regular growth in the state’s Basic Education Program funding formula, although top administration officials say some $86.5 million in other funds may be cut to continue BEP reforms.

House Finance Committee Chairman Craig Fitzhugh, D-Ripley, said lawmakers are awaiting Gov. Bredesen’s recommendations. But as he looked at higher education, he noted that “you start looking at the budget and you start trying to fill the hole and there are not that many places you can go forth. And higher education is unfortunately one of them that you might have to.”

Mr. Fitzhugh said that is “unfortunate” because the state has “made some strides in the last few years to try to rein in tuition and to try to get some operating funds and to try to do some capital improvements, which we’ve done, and some capital maintenance, which we’ve done.”

“It’s going to be a shame to back up,” he said.

Earlier this year, higher-education officials said they would try to hold down tuition to single-digit increases. But that was before there was talk about cuts in existing dollars to their operating budgets.

“That probably needs to be discussed,” Mr. Fitzhugh said. “You go back to who has to pay that tuition if it goes up and that’s the same people who are paying $3.50-plus for gasoline.”

Sen. Bo Watson, R-Hixson, a Senate Finance Committee member, said “obviously, it’s going to be a very tough year with some very painful decisions for us to make relative to handling the shortfall and the projected reductions next year.

“I hate that we’re even having to talk about key programs like education,” Sen. Watson said.

The lawmaker said he is “distressed” by the idea of reducing or even eliminating continued improvements to BEP reforms, dubbed BEP 2.0.

“Before I’m going to be funding additional growth in pre-kindergarten, we’re going to do K-12 if I have my say,” he said.

Hank Dye, University of Tennessee’s vice president for public and government relations, said “the reality is it’s a tough situation. We’ve all got to work together to make the best we can of limited resources.”

As to whether UT can maintain a prior commitment to hold tuition to single-digit increases if cuts come, Mr. Dye said the system has no “firm” figures yet and “until we do, we really can’t address what we would do about that. Nothing changes until we know all the information.”