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SPECIAL LEGISLATIVE UPDATE
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General Assembly Sends FY 2010-2011 Budget to Governor
The House and Senate on Thursday ratified a $5.1 billion state budget just minutes before adjourning the second session of the 118th General Assembly sin die. The bill now goes to the Governor who has been liberal in his use of line-item vetoes during his seven years in office. The legislature will return on June 15 to address the Governor's vetoes and a limited number of unfinished bills.
Appropriations for the Higher Education Tuition Grants program and for merit-based scholarships like the Palmetto Fellows, LIFE, HOPE and Lottery Tuition Assistance were funded at the current year's level. In spite of almost $2 billion being sliced from the state budget in the past two years, the General Assembly has not reduced its commitment to student financial aid.
In the budget that begins on July 1, PASCAL (Partnership Among South Carolina's Academic Libraries) was given third priority funding up to $1.5 million in the section that allocates excess unclaimed lottery prize money. The appropriation is completely contingent on the accumulation of funds in this account. In an "average" year, the amount of unclaimed prizes is sufficient to fund all the programs ahead of PASCAL with around $1 million to spare. The fate of PASCAL's funding will not be known until much later in the fiscal year.
SCICU is grateful for the support of so many of our state legislators and for the work of our committees, trustees, students and members of our campus communities for their grass-roots advocacy. In a world of competing programs and priorities, the clear choice again this year was not to retreat from investing in the future of South Carolina through higher education grants and scholarships. |
