Senate Budget Chairman JD Alexander met with University of South Florida President Judy Genshaft on Monday as supporters of the school worked to hammer out a plan to restore millions of dollars in reductions to its budget.
Alexander and Genshaft met after Tampa-area lawmakers clashed with the budget chairman over a plan that would slice almost $78.9 million from USF’s budget — more than any of the 10 other institutions in the State University System. Overall, universities would lose $400 million under the Senate proposal, with the money being drawn from cash reserves that Senate leaders say are unusually large.
The cut to USF has drawn close scrutiny because of a monthslong battle between Alexander, R-Lake Wales, and the school over the fate of its Lakeland campus. Alexander wants the campus, USF Polytechnic, to become an independent institution known as Florida Polytechnic University.
The Senate Budget Committee also approved a measure (SB 7100) that would write into law a plan by the Board of Governors that would create an independent Florida Polytechnic after it met a series of benchmarks. Some USF supporters also say it would accelerate the separation of the two schools.
After the meeting with Genshaft, Alexander told reporters the two sides were working toward an agreement.
“We’re not going to hurt USF or any other institution inequitably or unfairly,” Alexander said with Genshaft standing beside him. “We’ve got to work through what fair is.”
Some senators have questioned basing the cuts on reserves instead of enrollment, the traditional way that higher-education funding has been decided. And, they point out, state law requires universities to maintain a certain level of reserves to begin with.
“We’re not saying we shouldn’t have any cuts, but we don’t want anything to be disproportionate to us than to other Research I universities,” Genshaft said.
Genshaft also stressed that she was supportive of the Lakeland campus eventually gaining its independence.
But both sides said more work needs to be done, pointing to unspecified numbers that have to be crunched, before the issue of USF’s budget and the future of Polytechnic is resolved.
Meanwhile, Sen. Jim Norman, R-Tampa, said he was working on an amendment that would bring the cuts to USF more in line with other state universities based on a percentage of the funding — in case no deal is reached by the time the Senate takes up the budget later this week.
Norman said he would like to see the cut to USF lowered to around $45 million and also to see about $24 million moved to USF for absorbing positions and the pharmacy school currently house at Polytechnic.
“If the Senate position is just going to say, ‘Let’s go to conference,’ I’m going to be filing amendments that I believe make USF whole — both in the pharmacy school to absorbing the staffing to equalizing the reserves with all the other universities in the state of Florida,” Norman said.
But Norman was cagey about where he might get the money to patch part of the budget hole.
“I want to be fair to everybody and fair to the budget,” he said.
By Brandon Larrabee
