Thursday, November 6, 2008
Gov. Kathleen Sebelius announced Wednesday that state agencies would face 3-percent budget cuts for the upcoming fiscal year. While Sebelius said she planned to spare K-12 education from the belt-tightening, most state institutions, including the University, will have to find ways to carve enough from their individual budgets to reach the $60 million cut.
The decision stems from a meeting of the Consensus Revenue Estimating Group, an agency within the Kansas Division of the Budget. On Tuesday, the group reduced the 2009 fiscal year General Fund forecast by $211 million.
Nicole Corcoran, press secretary for Sebelius, said the governor had instructed heads of all state agencies to fill only essential positions at this time, and that deeper cuts for fiscal year 2010 were likely.
Sebelius said that a state tax increase was likely off the table, because Kansas families were already having difficulty weathering the financial downturn.
The $137 million budget shortfall is largely attributed to a decline in income tax revenue, as well as reduced property taxes as home values have sunk in the wake of the collapsing housing bubble.
Lynn Bretz, director of University Communications, said Wednesday afternoon that the Chancellor’s office was awaiting guidance from the Kansas Board of Regents regarding how the University should meet the coming budget restrictions.
“KU’s mission is to provide a high-quality education to the students of Kansas,” Bretz said. “For some time, we’ve been focusing on how to do that as efficiently as possible. When we got word this summer about the potential for budget cuts, we began looking hard at ways we could trim our expenditures. Obviously, with the governor’s announcement today, we’ll need to continue that approach.”
Bretz said that the University began evaluating expenditures in July, when the governor’s office announced 1- to 2-percent budget cuts. With Wednesday’s announcement, Bretz said that KU administrators and Regents would continue working with legislators in much the same way to find the most reasonable ways to deal with the economic downturn.
“One thing we ask people to keep in mind is that we’re all looking at a short-term budget shortfall,” Bretz said. “But over the long term, KU’s mission is to help create an educated workforce for Kansas, which is exactly what the state will need to grow the economy.”
— - Edited by Becka Cremer
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