Missouri lawmakers send higher ed budget to governor

A Lincoln University student crosses the bridge from Page Library on Lincoln's campus on April 30, 2016.
A Lincoln University student crosses the bridge from Page Library on Lincoln's campus on April 30, 2016.

Lincoln University is getting a little more money than last year, and State Technical College of Missouri will get less, under the Higher Education funding bill the House and Senate approved Wednesday and sent to the governor.

Lincoln University

Lincoln's total appropriation for the 2018-19 business year that begins July 1 is $20,670,193 - $137,680 larger than last year's appropriation.

But the state budget's general revenue funding in LU's appropriation is $1,362,320 smaller, while the state is spending $1.5 million more for the state's match to LU's federal land grant funding.

Brown explained: "The land grant match money was the Senate position at $3.4 million, (and) we had a new decision item of $600,000 - and that should allow them to draw down the maximum funds as a land grant status.

"That was important to a lot of people to get that done; we've been trying to get that done for awhile."

Over the last few years, LU administrators had been shifting money within the school's total budget to reach the maximum local contribution, but during his last year at Lincoln before moving last summer to Fisk University in Nashville, now-former President Kevin Rome's administration said the school no longer could afford to make those financial changes.

Interim President Mike Middleton couldn't be reached for comment Wednesday evening on Lincoln's new state appropriation.

Incoming President Jerald Jones Woolfolk - who takes over from Middleton on June 1 - will be on the job when the new budget goes into effect.

State Technical College

State Tech's state contribution for the new business year is $5,560,371 - $147,195 less than the current year's state budget - with all of the cut coming in the state's general revenue funding for the Linn-based school.

State Tech President Shawn Strong told the News Tribune: "From an administration standpoint, the only thing we have been focusing on more closely than FY19 enrollment is the state support for higher education."

Strong said he and other administrators "have kept in close contact with our Mid-Missouri elected officials during the entire general session and are thankful they fully recognize the relationship between higher education and workforce development."

Overall, Brown told colleagues before the final vote, the House-Senate conference committee agreed to the Senate's position of keeping higher education funding generally even with last year's appropriations.

"We thought that the $68 million that had been removed by the governor" in his proposed budget last January "should be put back in," Brown said, and it was.

But a number of new decision items - including increased security measures at the University of Central Missouri, Warrensburg, and Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau - were removed from the final budget by a compromise most of the state's schools reached with the House budget writers.

Brown said the Council on Public Higher Education - which represents all 13 of Missouri's four-year university campuses - along with officials from the University of Missouri System and from Missouri State University, Springfield, "cut a deal with the House that they would just take 60 percent funding of those (cooperative) programs (involving several campuses), if the House would put those programs into the schools' core budgets, and then not do any of the new programs."

Brown said that deal made a $12 million difference in money available for the state's colleges and universities.

Overall, Brown said, the state isn't helping its colleges and universities.

"We are still underfunding higher education, if they had a foundation formula" like Elementary and Secondary Education has, he said. "They're not flush with money."

State Tech's Strong said: "I say it often - it is much easier to talk about growth when you are not cutting programs and budgets.

"We look forward to a positive conversation about how State Tech can continue to grow and meet Missouri's growing workforce needs."

Assuming the governor accepts the bill with no line-item vetoes, state law still allows an automatic 3 percent withholding of the approved budget, as a cushion against revenue problems during the budget year.