After two full days of hearings, the Senate Appropriations Committee completed their initial work on the fiscal year (FY) 2012 budget, having acted on all 16 departmental budgets and cutting $330 million more than the $1.2 billion cut in Governor Snyder’s budget proposal. The Panel’s Chairman, Senator Roger Kahn (R-Saginaw) called attention to two main portions of the budget that now moves to the Senate floor: the absence of accounting gimmicks and one-time fund shifts and the holistic “pre K – 20” approach to education funding.
Meanwhile, Democrats, led by Committee Minority Vice Chair Senator Glenn Anderson (D-Westland), were nearly united in their “no” votes on almost every budget passed by the Senate panel and expressed their concerns over the spending plan’s potential impact on municipalities and school districts.
A significant highlight of the Senate-passed FY 2012 budget, and in clearest departure from Governor Snyder’s budget proposal, the Senate reduced the per-pupil funding cut from the $470 per-pupil proposed by the Governor to $340 per-pupil by only contributing $200 million in School Aid Fund (SAF) dollars to the state’s 15 public universities. The Governor proposed $500 million in SAF to Higher Ed. The $12.4 billion budget includes an $87 million cut to categoricals and a $175 million cut by funding half-day kindergarten programs at half the previous level.
On the Higher Ed side, the Senate panel moved a budget with a flat 15-percent cut as the Governor proposed; however, did not include the Governor’s request for boilerplate language regarding tuition restraint. Under the Governor’s proposal, universities that chose to raise tuition by more than 7.1 percent could face more significant cuts, as high as 23 percent. Last week the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Higher Ed moved their plan with different cuts for different schools – the University of Michigan receiving the biggest hit, Lake Superior State University
In a departure from the Subcommittee’s recommendations, the full Appropriations Committee added two pieces to the Higher Ed budget, both representing conservative social issues. Senator John Proos (R-St. Joseph) successfully amended the budget to require universities to report activities on embryonic stem cell research and Senator Mark Jansen (R-Gaines Township
The General Government budget closely mirrors Governor Snyder’s recommendations, ending the $301 million statutory revenue sharing program and replacing it with the $200 Economic Vitality Incentive Program. Municipalities can earn the funding through implementing best practices such as developing citizen-friendly reports on finances, combining services both internally and externally, and changing employee contributions for benefits. The budget also reduces revenue sharing to counties to $100, as the Governor proposed.
With some minor changes here and there, the Senate panel passed many departmental budgets (Treasury, AG, Civil Rights, State, and Technology Management & Budget) as the Governor proposed. Others, such as those described above as well as the Department of Corrections, Department of Transportation, and the Department of Human Services, contained significant differences to the Governor’s proposal and/or the action by the House of Representatives.
The full Senate is expected to move on all sixteen budgets next week.