The House Appropriations Committee has moved forward with a proposal that modifies the governor’s recommendations for the 2010 budget.
The measure, which will be taken up on the House floor early next week, follows Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’s recommendations except in education. The House version cuts school aid nearly $21 million.
According to Rep. Don Hill, the cut translates into $33 in base state aid for each student, or about a third of the total money spent on education.
“It’s a budget that’s structurally in balance, it makes good use of federal stimulus money, and I wish that it didn’t have to have the cuts that it does, but the reality is that we can’t spend money we don’t have,” Hill said.
A sharp drop in state revenues has made the cuts necessary. Legislative researchers estimate a $628 million deficit for 2010 under the budget currently in place.
Hill said that with federal stimulus money taken into account, the state will be spending almost 5 percent more in 2010 than it did in 2008. Education spending will increase 4.9 percent, but SRS will decrease 1.5 percent, public safety will decrease 2.8 percent and agriculture will see an 18.4 percent drop.
Hill hopes further cuts won’t be necessary, but that won’t be known until consensus revenue estimators meet on April 17th.
“When we come back in May for our omnibus (bill), I’m hopeful that we don’t have to make additional cuts, but it’s certainly possible that we will,” he said.
The Senate is at work on a slightly different version of the budget, one that follows the governor’s recommendations more closely.
The Senate Ways and Means Committee came to final action last night on the bill. Sen. Jim Barnett said the major difference between the House and Senate budgets are that the Senate’s doesn’t include the deeper education cuts.
“The Senate version is looking at other changes in the budget that deal with the governor’s proposal to not send money back to local units of government for property tax relief,” Barnett said.
The Senate bill will come up for debate early next week.