A round of budget cuts that passed the state legislature Oct. 23 slammed colleges but mostly spared school districts — for now.
“If anything, we just pushed the problem back a little for (this fiscal year),” Sen. John Arthur Smith (D-Deming), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Tuesday. “I wouldn’t be surprised a bit if next year we have cuts and tax increases adding up to $600 million.”
The legislature met in special session for a week to address the state’s $650 million shortfall, and walked away having made only $253 million in cuts. Gov. Bill Richardson has until Nov. 12 to sign the nine bills passed during the session, but has announced cost-cutting plans of his own (see sidebar). The legislature is scheduled to convene again Jan. 19 for a month-long regular session.
House Bill 17, which passed the Senate Oct. 23, cut only 0.8 percent from school district budgets but slashed most state agencies by 8 percent and college and university instructional budgets by 4 percent.
Northern New Mexico College had estimated its 2009-10 instructional budget at $14.1 million early in the school year, according to documents, which would put a 4-percent cut at about $600,000.
Northern employee union President Tim Crone said colleges would have been hit harder if lawmakers hadn’t reacted to lobbying by the union and other education-related groups.
“We thought it would be worse than it actually came out to be,” Crone said.
Still, Crone said Northern’s faculty senate and other college committees have already started talking about potential staff cuts, which the union would oppose. The union represents most non-administrative employees at the college. Northern Interim President David Trujillo did not return calls for comment.
The bill cut 2 percent up front from school districts’ annual, per-student funding — their main source of revenue — for the 2009-10 school year. Certain items like bus routes and classroom materials were cut even deeper, by up to 6.5 percent. But the bill includes a provision to help districts pay their insurance bills, which compensates for more than half the cut, state School Boards Association Director Joe Guillen said.
“We’re somewhat pleased with the results, it could’ve been a lot worse,” Guillen said. “The reduction was minimal.”
Española School District Superintendent Janette Archuleta said she is not sure yet what that means for the District, especially because Richardson has yet to sign the bills into law. Archuleta said a 2-percent cut adds up to $660,000 for the District, but was not sure how much the District would benefit from the insurance payment assistance.
Some provisions in the bill may hurt Española more than other districts, however, because of its failure to pass a mil levy or bond measure.
Legislators voted to take $29 million from the state Public School Capital Outlay Fund, which funds school construction, and use that to help districts cover insurance bills. On average, insurance amounts to 1.2 percent of districts’ budgets, Guillen said.
The provision comes with a downside, however. A Legislative Finance Committee report warned it would cause “a number of school building construction projects to be delayed or moved to subsequent fiscal years.”
The state is still discussing how that will affect school construction projects, and may sell bonds to replace money in the Fund, state Public School Facilities Authority Director Bob Gorrell said.
“If they sell the bonds, all the projects that are in line would proceed as we originally planned,” Gorrell said. “If the bonds are not sold to replace that money, it would just bring everything to a halt.”
Most projects already under construction would not be affected if the state doesn’t sell the bonds, Gorrell said. But those that have been approved but remain pending — including a new Alcalde Elementary and renovations to Española Middle School and Velarde Elementary — would be delayed, Gorrell said.
The District may also lose out on a separate bill that would let districts dip into mil levy proceeds to cover deficits. State law generally restricts mil levy spending only to school building maintenance. The bill would let cash-strapped districts borrow from their mil levy funds to cover any operational expense — including salaries — provided they repay the money by 2016.
However, the bill does little for Española. The District is one of only three districts in the state not receiving mil levy revenue.
Note: A correction has been issued for this story. The 4-percent budget cut Northern New Mexico College faces amounts to about $600,000, not the $700,000 initially indicated in the story.