Another state budget, more questions . . .

The House presented their budget today. The cuts in this budget are not as deep as those in the Senate budget. That is the good news. The not so good news is that because they are so far apart it will likely take longer in conference committee to reach a compromise budget that the Governor will not veto. It could take until late April before we will have the final budget. Even with these differences, however, we are in a better position today than we were prior to the announcement of these budget bills. We at least know the worst case scenario for cuts, the Senate budget.

What we learned today, however, again demonstrates just how difficult this work is given the time constraints and complexity of the task. Late this afternoon Lori Cloud came back from a meeting with disturbing news. Basically, we were advised to not use the data given to us on the Senate’s spread sheet because they have not included all of the cuts in their calculations. In addition, there are far too many unanswered questions to know if the stimulus funds can be used in the way the Senate has included them in their budget. One step forward and two steps back. Oh well, onward we go.

I was going to share the differences in the level of cuts for the three budgets, but I will wait until we better understand the net impact of the cuts. I say this because though the House level of cuts is smaller the net impact may be greater because they do not back fill with as much revenue from the stimulus package. So, we find ourselves in the continuing position of waiting to learn the impact on our system. That will emerge over the next days and weeks. Meanwhile, we will continue to move forward with April 13th the date for the recommended budget adjustments to be shared publicly and May 5th the date when the board makes the final decisions.