Legislature lights another budget bomb for SUS

For years, Florida has had a policy of encouraging as many high school students as possible to take academically rigorous Advanced Placement courses.

It's a laudable policy because students enrolled in AP and International Baccalaureate courses are better prepared for college-level work and, thus, more likely to earn college degrees.

Fast forward to this year and it's clear that the Florida Legislature has higher priorities than encouraging academic excellence through properly funding its state universities.

How else can one explain the legislature's willingness to severely cut state universities rather than raise the necessary funding to support it?

While neither chamber has done enough to find new revenue, the Florida Senate has taken some small steps in the right direction by voting to raise cigarette taxes and plugging up a real estate transfer tax loophole.

Still, both budget proposals rely heavily on short-sighted financial measures that will not fix the state’s long-term money problems: massive spending cuts, trust fund sweeps, fee increases for government services, tuition hikes, gambling expansion, and use of federal stimulus dollars.

Most lawmakers would rather short-change state universities than overhaul tax exemptions that benefit the state's wealthiest indviduals and corporations.

But from the two choices, the Senate budget would inflict much less pain on FAMU.

Under the Senate plan, the State University System would face a 6.7 percent cut in general revenue. FAMU would loss $6.9 million. The House version of the budget would slash 22 percent from public universities, which would mean a $22.7 million cut at FAMU.

It is a shame lawmakers aren't willing to invest in academic excellence in order to build the kind of university system Florida needs to dig its way out of this economic crisis. Reducing funding for state universities is but a symptom of a much larger malady at the Capitol.

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