Gov. Holden orders budget cuts for education

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Following through on repeated warnings, Gov. Bob Holden ordered $82 million in cuts to public schools and state colleges on Thursday to help cover a budget shortfall.

He also ordered about $75 million in cuts to other state agencies, which will mean hundreds of vacant positions will remain unfilled, a few employees will be laid off and some programs will be scaled-back or eliminated, said state budget director Linda Luebbering.

The cuts had been expected for some time. For weeks, Holden had said he would be forced to cut education funding if he could not reach an agreement with lawmakers to fully cover the state's $400 million projected budget shortfall for the fiscal year ending June 30.

Lawmakers last week sent Holden legislation authorizing the sale of revenue bonds, but limiting the amount of the proceeds that could be used this fiscal year. When combined with previously agreed-upon cuts, that left an $82 million gap that Holden had said would be covered with education cuts.

The cuts include $61.3 million from public elementary and secondary schools and $21 million from state colleges and universities. Luebbering said the money will be withheld from the schools over the next four months.

Well before the cuts were made official late Thursday, the state's lower and higher education departments had released lists of how each school would be affected.

Many schools had already been operating under the assumption their state funding would be cut. The University of Missouri, for example, said earlier Thursday it would absorb its $9.6 million cut largely at the administrative level of the four-campus system. More than half of the cuts would be covered by using contingency funds, operational reserves and leaving administrative positions unfilled, the university said. The rest would be left to the individual campuses to decide how to handle.

Many of the state's 524 public school districts also could cover their cuts by dipping into cash reserves. But Chris Straub, of the Missouri School Boards' Association, said previously some districts had quit buying supplies, canceled student field trips and teacher conferences and delayed building maintenance because of the expected cuts.

The midyear cuts to public elementary and secondary schools are the first in about a decade. State funding for colleges and universities was also cut last year.

Holden said he had no choice but to cut education funding because other parts of state government have already taken significant budget cuts over the past two years.

Republicans had insisted Holden could have avoided the education cuts if he had adopted their plan to spend some of the state's reserves that typically are carried over to next year. Holden said that would have been financially unwise.

The $75 million in cuts from other state agencies had been agreed to by Holden as part of the budget negotiations with the Republican-controlled Legislature.

As part of those cuts, Luebbering said, the state will leave vacant about 500 positions in various agencies and several employees in the Division of Liquor Control would be laid off now, instead of as planned in July. There also could be a few layoffs in other departments, she said.

Luebbering said the cuts also will delay the opening of a new Division of Youth Services' girls group home in St. Louis and result in the cancelation of an advertising contract for a healthy babies campaign, among other things.

"We're trying to minimize the impact on direct services," Luebbering said. "But that means we are doing some things on the administrative side that don't make sense in the long-run."