The budget conference committee of the Florida Legislature agreed on revenue cuts that will leave FAMU with $12.3M fewer recurring dollars than it had last year.FAMU is slated to receive a total of $65.5M in general revenue for 2012-2013.
The university ran on a $79.7M general revenue budget in 2010-2011 with $6M in nonrecurring dollars for “special outreach projects.” It is running on a $77.9M general revenue budget this year with $5M in nonrecurring dollars for “targeted student outreach.”
“Any further cuts are going to put us at a point where we're looking at additional program cuts and possible layoffs,” FAMU President James H. Ammons recently told the Tallahassee Democrat.
FAMU’s education enhancement appropriation is also down. It is $9.9M compared with last year’s $13.4M. Those educational enhancement projections are already questionable because they are based upon estimates of lottery revenue.
Lawmakers want state universities to use a portion of their reserves to fill the budget gap. They say they intend to reimburse the money next year.
The State University System of Florida (SUS) has heard those types of “we’ll pay you back” promises from the legislature for years. Lawmakers still owe about half a billion dollars to the state matching gift program. So far, none of the unpaid IOU money is anywhere in sight.
The legislature also says that tuition increases will help universities deal with the cuts. But this will not help much either due to the legislature’s inflated tuition projections. Lawmakers assume that every student at every state university will take a full course load every semester.
The legislature projected that FAMU would generate $57.1M in tuition and fees for FYE 2010. FAMU actually collected $11M less than that figure for a total of about $46M because most students cannot afford to take full course loads.
Conference Report on HB 5001
FAMU
Education Enhancement $9,917,968
General Revenue $65,584,450
Tuition/Fees $72,006,551
Crestview $1,500,000