This story has been changed to make the attribution of a quote to Sen. Jim Rosapepe more clear.
As state lawmakers negotiate on the final elements of Maryland’s $32 billion budget, a picture is emerging: bright in the short-term, murkier in the distance.
The House of Delegates and state Senate both passed their versions of the budget last week and yesterday started ironing out the differences between the two plans. A final product needs to be ready for the governor’s signature by Sine Die, the traditional name for the end of the legislative session, which this year falls on April 12.
While budget analysts and Republican legislators proposed a multitude of cuts to the University System of Maryland, both documents largely kept the governor’s proposal intact. But lawmakers did take steps that could cause worry in the future. Both houses recommended slashing the system’s reserves — the Senate by about $3 million, the House by $10 million. And both made non-binding pledges to freeze funding for higher education until 2012, which would almost certainly result in tuition increases beyond this year’s 3-percent jump.
Sen. Jim Rosapepe (D-Anne Arundel and Prince George’s), who represents College Park, said he thought the most important parts of Gov. Martin O’Malley’s budget for the university system have been preserved in both versions of the bill.
“I don’t think there was a material change in the governor’s budget,” said Rosapepe, who added that the governor’s overarching plan to protect the university system from large cuts and keep the tuition increase at 3 percent has been maintained.
The one major area of Higher Education-related disagreement between the chambers is the fate of a legislative scholarship program long targeted by critics as a source of patronage and waste. The program allows lawmakers to dole out $11.5 million in scholarships to constituents each year. The House eliminated the program, instead choosing to funnel the money towards the Maryland Higher Education Commission to hand out need-based aid. The senate opted to keep the program.
The House and Senate successfully fought off suggestions from GOP members to slash 1,000 positions from the university system, cut down on the travel budget and eliminate or scale back on tuition breaks for university employees and their family members. Ultimately, these requests manifested into a recommendation to cut $50 million from the university — a staggering reduction the General Assembly rejected. They also turned down recommendations by the Department of Legislative Services to cut funding for the university system’s satellite campuses at Shady Grove and Hagerstown.
Higher education didn’t escape completely unscathed, however. The House cut $2 million from the system’s budget, intended to reflect savings from the reorganization of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, part of which this university would absorb. University President Dan Mote has said the cut could harm the state’s efforts to become a biotechnology hub.
And while cuts to the fund balance are preferable to ones from the operating budget, university system lobbyist P.J. Hogan has expressed concern that continuing to slash away at the reserves could harm the system’s bond ratings and its ability to get loans.
But these trims are relatively minor compared to a threatened spending freeze and the possible return of the man some higher education supporters consider the bogeyman.
“The reality is the future of higher education funding is going to be much more determined by whether [Gov. Martin] O’Malley or [former Gov. Robert] Ehrlich is elected governor,” Rosapepe said.
Ehrlich, who announced he would run last week, is formally kicking off his campaign with events in Rockville and Halethorpe tomorrow. Tuition increased more than 40 percent during Ehrlich’s previous tenure from 2003 to 2007.
For now, the ultimate fate of the university’s budget is still in the hands of a few state legislators who are blocked off from the public eye. The conference committee — legislators appointed by Senate President Mike Miller and House Speaker Michael Busch to represent the chamber — meets in secret. Their decisions on reserve cuts and the scholarship funding should be announced in the next few days.
“Typically, it is not a very public process,” Stern said. “But the session ends next Monday, so they gotta get it done soon.”
ampino@umdbk.com
