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| Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Education (3/17/15) |
None of the senators at the meeting asked why the only funds
that were moved into the new budget entity were the Education & General
(E&G) dollars that were previously in the FAMU budget. Florida State
University is still receiving millions for faculty at the FAMU-FSU College of
Engineering in its separate E&G budget. No statements were made about the college, at all.
FAMU received the core operating funds from the College of Engineering in its E&G budget between 1987 and 2014. But that has come to a stop now that President Elmira Mangum has agreed to support a Board of Governors plan to change the way the Florida Legislature appropriates money to the program.
Back in 2014, FSU received an appropriation of $5M in its general
revenue (E&G) budget that paid for 36 FSU professors at the engineering
college. The money for those faculty members is remaining there instead of
being shifted to the new budget entity.
Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee, was present at the March
17 meeting. His district includes FAMU. Sen. Dwight Bullard, D-Miami, a FAMU
alumnus, was also present.
The fact that Montford asked no questions about the fairness
of the change in the funding arrangement is not a surprise. He was quiet back in 2014 when
the Senate debated then-Sen. John Thrasher’s proposal to split the College of Engineering. Thrasher said FAMU could keep the current
facility in Innovation Park and the annual operational budget, which was then
$10.9M. But one problem was that the operational money didn’t include the costs of
replacing the 36 faculty positions that were funded through the separate FSU appropriation.
Thrasher’s proposal would have also left FAMU with an
engineering facility that needed millions in critical renovations while giving
FSU a brand new state-of-the-art complex.
The Thrasher proposal passed the Senate but failed in House
of Representatives.
Bullard did speak out against Thrasher’s effort to split the
engineering college last year, which Mangum also opposed. He would have likely
also raised questions about the fairness of leaving FSU’s engineering faculty
funds out of the current budget entity transfer if the FAMU administration had
requested him to do so.
But it doesn’t look like Mangum is planning to put up a
fight on this issue.
So FSU will still be guaranteed the ability to manage the
$5M engineering college appropriation that goes into its general revenue. But
the engineering college funds that FAMU used to receive in its E&G line
item are being shifted into a new budget entity that is not explicitly designated to be under the control of FAMU.
Watch the video from the March 17 Florida Senate
Appropriations Subcommittee on Education meeting here.