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| Gov. Rick Scott and First Lady Ann Scott at the Inaugural Prayer Breakfast at FAMU in 2015 |
Yesterday, Scott used his line item veto pen to slash a
record $461.4 million from the 2015-2016 appropriations bill before signing a
$78.2 billion budget for Florida. But the governor opted to leave all of FAMU’s
appropriations intact.
The money includes $1,480,000 for the completion of Phase II
of the College of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences. FAMU also received a
big $6,155,000 to begin constructing a brand new Student Affairs building. Those projects will both be funded with PECO dollars.
FAMU will have a total of $66,611,060 in General Revenue for the fiscal year that ends in 2016. One part of that line item is a new $1,000,000 in recurring dollars for “Student Success Support Services” to improve graduation and retention rates. The General Revenue dollars for the Black Male College Explorers program got a boost of $335,000 for a new total of $500,000.
Back in 2013, the Florida Legislature started placing the
operating funds for the Crestview Education Center in FAMU’s General instead of
a separate line item. FAMU netted its regular $1,500,000 for that program again
this year.
The appropriations law also designates $14,228,081 for FAMU from
the Education Enhancement Trust Fund.
The budget also authorizes FAMU to take in a total of
$66,373,112 in tuition payments. That is down from the $72,446,932 FAMU was
authorized to receive last year. But regardless, FAMU’s total tuition payments
are not likely to even come close to that number because the legislature
continues to assume that every student will take a full course load. That
simply doesn’t happen at FAMU or any other state university.