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January 8, 2003

State appropriation approved

State lawmakers last month approved — at long last — a $163.4 million Pitt appropriation for the current fiscal year.

The state House and Senate voted 184-16 and 49-0, respectively, to approve Pitt’s appropriation bill on Dec. 19. Gov. Ed Rendell signed the bill four days later, nearly six months past the July 1 beginning of the 2003-04 fiscal year.

It was the longest that Pitt and Pennsylvania’s other state-related universities (Penn State, Temple and Lincoln) had to wait for their state appropriations since 1977, when the schools’ funding bills likewise were held up until shortly before Christmas.

In 2003 as in 1977, funding for the state-related schools was not controversial in itself: Rendell, a Democrat, proposed cutting the universities’ appropriations by 5 percent, and few members of the Republican-controlled General Assembly questioned or criticized the proposal. Lawmakers ended up approving Rendell’s proposed appropriation for Pitt except that they added $50,000 more for the University’s rural education outreach program.

The real budgetary wrangling between legislators and the freshman governor came over income tax hikes and Rendell’s proposals for property tax relief and legalized slot machines. But, as a “non-preferred” appropriation, Pitt’s funding bill had to wait until the governor and General Assembly produced a final state budget. That $21.3 billion spending plan was signed into law by Rendell on Dec. 23, the same day he signed Pitt’s bill.

Pitt’s FY 2003-04 appropriation includes:

  • $145,625,000 for educational and general expenses.
  • $413,000 for student life initiatives.
  • $6,558,000 for doctor of medicine instruction.
  • $1,029,000 for the School of Dental Medicine’s dental clinics.
  • $321,000 for recruitment and retention of disadvantaged students.
  • $7,682,000 for general maintenance and operations of Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic.
  • $496,000 for Western Psych’s teen suicide center.
  • $249,000 for the Graduate School of Public Health.
  • $1,013,000 for rural education outreach.

The appropriation is about $15 million less than the $178.5 million funding that the University was budgeted to receive two years ago. Since then, Pitt has been forced by Harrisburg to absorb a series of budget freezes and cuts.

In November, Pitt submitted its appropriation request for the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2004. The University is asking Harrisburg to restore Pitt’s state funding to the $178.5 million level originally approved for FY 2001-02. Pitt also wants an additional $6 million for research infrastructure upgrades, similar to lab-improvement funds that Harrisburg previously granted Pitt and later folded into the University’s base budget.

“With this level of commonwealth support, it would be our hope to limit tuition increases to 4 percent and to increase the compensation pool [of money for salaries] by at least 4 percent for the next fiscal year,” Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg wrote in Pitt’s FY 2004-05 appropriation request.

Nordenberg is expected to plead Pitt’s case at hearings of the state House and Senate appropriations committees this winter. The Senate committee’s hearing is scheduled for Feb. 24, beginning at 2:30 p.m., at a location to be announced. The House hearing has not been scheduled yet.
— Bruce Steele                                                   

 

 

 

 

 

Filed under: Feature,Volume 36 Issue 9

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