The Pitt New$ T h e in de p e n d e n t st ude nt ne w spap e r of t he University of Pittsburgh
BUDGET WOES
PA has gone eight months without a budget. Now, state lawmakers’ most recent proposal, and a bill that would fund Pitt, are in jeopardy.
Saskia Berrios-Thomas and Dale Shoemaker
The Pitt News Staff Pennsylvania legislators have passed a budget and four bills that would restore funding to Pennsylvania’s staterelated schools, but it’s unlikely Pitt will see dollar signs any time soon. On Wednesday, state lawmakers passed a state budget worth $32 billion and four non-preferred appropriation bills worth more than half of a billion dollars in total that would restore state funding to Pitt, Penn State and Pennsylvania’s other state-related universities.
LINCOLN UNIVERSITY
$14,084,000
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
$143,193,000
Though he neither signed nor vetoed the bills Thursday, Gov. Tom Wolf ’s press secretary said in a Wednesday release that the budget bill “would force Pennsylvania off of the fiscal cliff,” indicating Wolf will veto the measure, meaning Pitt will continue to operate without state funding for the current fiscal year. Wolf ’s indication now leaves the fate of the four additional appropriation bills uncertain. Pitt’s bill would give it more than $143 million after eight months of financial limbo. The state is supposed to allocate
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March 18, 2016 | Issue 124 | Volume 106
around $147 million to Pitt according to Chancellor Patrick Gallagher, who said the money represents about 15 percent of Pitt’s annual budget. The legislature passed the bills for the four schools as amendments to older state laws that established the universities as state-related. Pitt’s bill, for example, was an amendment to its 1966 charter that shifted the University from its private status to its partially public status. The legislature has passed four bills, one each to give money to Pitt, Penn State, Lincoln and Temple Universities, but the larger budget impasse remains unresolved. In past years, Pitt received its funding from the state through appropriation bills passed alongside the larger state budget. But since the state legislature has failed to pass a budget for the 20152016 fiscal year since July, legislators have starved Pitt and the other three state-related schools — Penn State, Temple and Lincoln Universities — of money they normally receive each summer.
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY
$146,913,000
“This budget is out-of-balance by at least $290 million, would create a year end deficit of more than $1.6 billion in 2016-17, and would force Pennsylvania off a fiscal cliff,” Wolf ’s press secretary Jeff Sheridan said in a release Wednesday. In a cautiously hopeful email he sent to students, faculty and staff late Wednesday evening, Gallagher said Gov. Wolf had voiced support for inc re as i ng s t a t e
PENN STATE
$244,400,000
funding to Pitt, but added that “revenue questions” still exist. Wednesday’s bill would have restored 97 percent of the $147 million Gallagher said Pitt was expecting, which includes a 5 percent increase in funding from last year. Wolf has supported increasing state funding for Pitt but has continuously rejected Republican-passed budgets that don’t balance the state budget. Gallagher also urged members of the University to call or write a letter to Gov. Wolf in his email Wednesday, as part of his WithPitt campaign to See Budget on page 2