BATON ROUGE – By law, the Louisiana Board of Regents is constitutionally charged with establishing the annual budgets for systems of public higher education. Yesterday, Wednesday, March 23, 2016, the Regents reviewed and accepted the FY 2016-2017 funding recommendation.
This year, the FY 17 Executive Budget was presented with a $180.3 million reduction to colleges, universities, specialized institutions and boards, and $233.2 million to LOSFA and TOPS in order to balance to the estimated $2 billion state general fund shortfall. The Revenue Estimating Conference (REC) met last week and revised the revenue estimate to account for various measures enacted by the legislature during the 1st Special Legislative Session of 2016. Taking in to account the various revenue bills, approximately $1.26 billion was raised for FY 17. The latest shortfall calculation for FY 17 has been reduced from approximately $2 billion to approximately $747 million.
“Although this recommendation is based on the executive budget, there have been numerous revenue measures passed during the recent special legislative session," said Terrence Ginn, Deputy Commissioner for Finance and Administration. "What was once a $2 billion shortfall has been reduced to approximately $747 million, therefore, the preliminary funding recommendation as proposed today should not resemble the final distribution that will be presented to the board for approval at the June meeting."
The preliminary recommendation which was approved Wednesday is based on distributing available funds in the executive budget through the outcomes-based funding formula models for 2 and 4-year institutions and a pro-rata distribution for the specialized institutions. With regard to the 2 and 4-year institutions, 70% of the distribution is based on each institution’s existing operating budget base, 15% is based on cost, and 15% is based on outcomes.
The final distribution will be determined by the funds appropriated in the enrolled version of the appropriations bill (HB 1) and will be presented for approval at the June 2016 meeting. The Table of Organization (T.O.) was eliminated in the executive budget.