Mixed budget news for PSU

Good news and bad news for new Pittsburg State president Dr. Steve Scott.
The good news is Pittsburg State will be receiving stimulus funding that may relieve the tuition burden for students. The bad news is Scott has to face an additional 2 percent budget cuts issued from the governor’s office Thursday morning.

The bad news
Thursday, just after Scott was welcomed by Pittsburg leaders, he received news of cuts issued by Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson.
The state received revenue figures that were lower than expected, prompting a $160 million budget deficit on the fiscal year 2010 budget that went into effect July 1.
Parkinson announced Thursday that the state would generate $69 million through federal funds and accounting steps, but cuts throughout the state total $90 million.
The norm seems to be 2 percent cuts. That’s the case for K-12 schools and is also the case for the Kansas Board of Regents, which is expected to pass those cuts down to the universities. All told, K-12 schools are losing $39 million and the Kansas Board of Regents is cutting $15 million.
“Unfortunately, this year’s cuts have undone several years of budgetary progress by essentially taking higher education back to 2006 funding levels,” said a statement from Jill Docking, chairwoman of the Kansas Board of Regents.
“On campuses across the state, class offerings have been reduced, employees have been laid off, and students are generally receiving fewer services as a result of this year’s budget cuts. However, like every other state governmental entity, we’re prepared to do our part and know that we’ll ultimately get through this. I’m hopeful that state lawmakers will do everything they can to repair the state’s higher education system once the economy improves.”
For Pittsburg State, that means a further cut somewhere in the neighborhood of $700,000. That’s a hard pill to swallow after the university was already dealing with nearly $4 million in budget cuts.
“We knew and expected this set of cuts,” Scott said. “It’s not a surprise. That doesn’t make it easy at all, though.”
After the first round of cuts, PSU was sitting at a budget of roughly $35 million, down from near $39 million last year. Scott was unable to say where that $700,000 would come from, but he did mention the difficulties of keeping the students isolated from the cuts.
“We’ll continue to reduce the amount of dollars we spend,” Scott said. “We’ll hold back equipment money so if more money is opened up later, we can start spending that.
“The students have already been seeing the impact on the fall semester with some reductions in the number of class offerings. The fact is, we will have fewer sections.”

Good news
On the other hand, there is positive information from the federal government. Pittsburg State is receiving nearly $2.2 million in stimulus funding. However, unlike other sources of funding, much of the stimulus funds is set aside for certain tasks.
Roughly 2/3 of the funds, about $1.4 million, is to be used for deferred maintenance projects at Pittsburg State to help fix, update and overhaul campus facilities.
The remaining $793,000 is tagged for tuition mitigation. Scott said final decisions about the tuition mitigation have not yet been made, but he said the process was far enough along to release current plans.
“We will look at that in more detail next week,” Scott said. “We are looking at ways to put the money back in the pockets of students. That’s how we will help them. So that’s our kind of thinking.”
Scott said one possibility could be a $50 scholarship to students that could diminish, for example, resident undergraduate tuition increases from $116 to $66.
Unfortunately, Scott noted that the stimulus money was only for two years, meaning that once the money is gone, it’s gone.
For Pittsburg State, it is a mixed bag for the new president.
“When the economy is going good and things are going well, we want our fair share of the gains,” Scott said. “But when the going is difficult, we will take our fair share of the cuts as well.”

Andrew Nash can be reached at andrew.nash@morningsun.net or by calling 231-2600 ext. 132.