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The Senate on
Thursday overwhelmingly approved and sent to the House of
Representatives a $454 million spending package for eight public
universities, community colleges and low-income students
dependent on Monetary Award Program grants.
The bipartisan move, which could stave off mass layoffs at
several state universities, builds on a $600 million,
higher-education appropriation that Republican Governor Bruce
Rauner signed on April 25.
Thursday’s action also represents another encouraging break in
the state’s acrimonious budget fight between the governor and
Democrats, who control the state legislature, as they face a
scheduled legislative adjournment at the end of May.
“We have since found more dollars which we can appropriate to
our universities to make them more competitive, to make them
more viable and to give them a bridge going forth into the 2017
budget,” said state Senator Donne Trotter, a Chicago Democrat
and a sponsor of Thursday’s legislation.
The latest appropriation was supported financially by companion
legislation that passed the Senate on Thursday authorizing
Rauner’s administration not to repay $454 million borrowed from
state special-purpose funds during the 2015 fiscal year. Without
legislative action, that amount would have had to be repaid June
30 from the state’s main operational fund.
The approach drew isolated claims of budgetary sleight of hand
during floor debate.
“This is ridiculous, swapping money from one pocket to another,
saying you have it when you don’t,” said state Senator Kyle
McCarter, a Republican from Lebanon, Illinois, a rural enclave
nearly 300 miles southwest of Chicago.
The Senate-passed legislation cannot be acted on by the House
until Tuesday at the earliest when that legislative chamber is
scheduled to reconvene.
The respite for the state's higher-education system comes after
its community colleges received rating downgrades and negative
outlooks by Moody's Investors Service in recent weeks, and
Chicago State University had faced the threat of possible
closure.
(Editing by Matthew Lewis)
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