The governor, house and senate have all came out with their initial budgets.
Interesting enough, the house is cutting back (slightly) on higher education, as a way to punish the universities (mostly UCF, the bad boys of the State University System…) for misuse of funds meant for education (faculty/students) for capital construction. The Senate increases spending. The two groups will now have to compromise…
All three groups agree to increase spending on Bright Futures and Benacquisto. These scholarship programs are way to popular for them to decrease funding. Only way I can see that happening is a multi-year recession (which is what happen last time to reduce funding).
The Bright Futures funding is almost $600 million a year, the Benacquisto funding is lost in the numbers. I really don’t see that funding being reduced, unless they feel forced to reduce BF funding.
Yep, the house really wants to make an issue out of UCF’s shenanigans.
The house approved an $89.9 billion budget, while the Senate OK’ed a $90.3 billion version, so they will reach a compromise. I’m betting the house will increase the pre-eminence funding, but hold on limiting capital spending (as a way to punish the universities).
The article mentions UF’s new Data Science and Information Technology building. It will be built across from the bookstore (who really needs 350 parking spots? Not UF…).
https://gcr.ufl.edu/media/gcrufledu/government-relations/2018_Legislative_sheets[DataScience]7.pdf
http://www.facilities.ufl.edu/committees/docs/1524776412.pdf