The Governor’s office has released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 Budget and is well on the way to having it considered by the Illinois General Assembly. The General Assembly is set to vote on the budget in May. The process started in June 2006. FY 2008 starts July 1, 2007.
Gov. Blagojevich has proposed an increase in the budget for higher education. “The good news is the fact that the state is allocating more resources to the institution. It’s not a budget that is going to take care of all the needs of the institution. If you look at the numbers the state gave last year the number is actually a little less than 1%,” said Vice President of Finance and Administration Mark Wilcockson.
The governor has given the figure of a 1.5% increase for higher education, the increase for NEIU is lower said Vice President Wilcockson because, “The Governor and the Board of Education recommend that a couple of programs we had last year be taken out of our appropriation. We had a North Atlantic Slave Trade Study and retention and time to degree initiatives, a total of about $370,000. Those are coming out of our base appropriation.”
An appropriation is when money is given to the university for a particular use, many times it is a one-time use.
The Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies (CCICS) was given a grant of $400,000 from the State of Illinois, the budget reflects $200,000 given. Representative Eddie Washington and Senator Mattie Hunter proposed the bill and the grant was commissioned for Northeastern, and signed by former President Salme Steinberg. [See Independent Nov 7, 2006.] The research is supposed to be completed by spring of 2007.
There was also the amount of $170,000 from the FY 2007 budget for Retention and Time to Degree Initiatives. It was used for hiring advisors.
Wilcockson said that just under 1% increase would be used to, “…target incremental money for salaries and utility costs that are main areas where we will have unavoidable costs. We are projecting an increase in electricity of $400,000 next year. With internal reallocations we made commitments to increase course sections in particularly high demand areas.”
The budget on the table is the proposed budget by Blagojevich for the entire state government, not just for Illinois universities, where there is still a lot of work that needs to happen before the budget is passed.
Wilcockson elaborated by saying, “There are a lot of very big issues on the table. The governor proposed a gross receipt tax, which is taxing Illinois corporations not on incomes, it’s taxing them on receipts. This budget is based on some really big things having to happen. It’s the gross receipt tax, it’s the lease of the lottery, and it’s approval to issue pension bonds so all these things have to line up for this budget to hold. Where this is going to go in the general assembly is anyone’s guess.”
Wilcockson concluded, “It’s a good time for student faculty staff alumni to advocate on behalf of the institution, and let all our friends in Springfield know how important Northeastern is and the work that we do; and advocate for additional funding.”