Budget battle goes to Senate

by Daniel J. Fitzgibbons, Chronicle staff

he House completed work on a $22.8 billion fiscal 2003 state budget last May 16 and sent the measure on to the Senate, which is expected to begin its budget work in early June.

     The House package restored $16.65 million to the University system, including $14.3 million to raise the maintenance appropriation to about $449.1 million from the $434.8 million proposed by the House Ways and Means Committee. Even with the restored funds, the appropriation is about $11.5 million less than this year's allocation of $460.1 million.

     In a consolidated amendment sponsored by Rep. Peter Larkin (D-Pittsfield), House members also approved $2 million for the endowment incentive program and restored some funding for Commonwealth College and the Dartmouth campus's Advanced Technology Center in Fall River.

     House members also approved using $22.5 million in Clean Elections funds to pay the FY02 costs of several collective bargaining agreements, including those covering Amherst campus faculty, professional and classified employees and graduate student workers. The price tag on the first-year of those contracts is about $12.5 million.

     In higher education funding, the House restored $2.4 million for the Education and Reference Materials and $15 million for the state scholarship program.

     Meanwhile, Senate leaders this week signaled that they are ready to embrace a $1.06 billion in tax increases approved by the House. Senate President Thomas Birmingham (D-Chelsea) said there are enough votes for the package to override a threatened veto by Acting Gov. Jane Swift.

     Senate Ways and Means Committee Chair Sen. Mark Montigny (D-New Bedford) is expected to release his proposed budget the week of June 3. Floor debate would begin the following week.

     Sen. Stan Rosenberg (D-Amherst) has put forward a list of fiscal '03 budget requests that would level fund the University's operating budget plus finance almost $38 million in collective bargaining contracts.

     Rosenberg filed the UMass budget request following a meeting earlier this month with Montigny, Birmingham and 12 other senators. Rosenberg said it was the first time that so many senators had met solely to discuss funding for UMass and the state's higher education system.

     "The awareness that a healthy University is absolutely critical to our economic prosperity is growing," Rosenberg said. "We have to be clear-eyed about the budget crisis, but the University, more and more, is being viewed as an investment, not an expense. And that's how it should be."

     Rosenberg's UMass funding proposal also highlighted money for library reference materials, scholarships and continued support for Commonwealth College.

     As the legislative budget process moves forward, one unknown factor in the calculations is the state's revenue stream. Early last week, the Swift administration said plummeting revenues from capital gains and other taxes could add as much as $400 million to the budget shortfall.

     State Secretary of Administration and Finance Kevin J. Sullivan said that the Department of Revenue is expecting to take in $200 million or less in capital gains taxes this year. State leaders were expecting about $408 million.

     When combined with other lagging revenue sources, Sullivan warned that the fiscal year could end July 1 with a $400 million shortfall.