SHSU Not Impacted by Legislative Failure
After sending out an e-mail to our SHSU PR Director (who I figured would've been contacted by the media about this issue) and talking to some contacts with legislative ties, I've determined that our university was not impacted by the fact our legislators were not able to approve the state-approved tuition revenue bonds.
You may have seen some articles and news packages about universities that were also hurt by legislative failures. In fact, there was several billion dollars that were tied up in this legislation, HB 2239, for all of those interested in the Texas Legislature. Notably, hundreds of millions of dollars that were set to the University of Texas medical branches were held up.
I think we can attribute this to President Gaertner, Vice President Parker and others involved in the fiscal issues of the university. On top of that, many of our construction projects have already been linked to bond money or are paid by other sources. At this time, we do not need to rely on the state for any growth beyond what they have already pledged, so this defeat as noted above does not impact us.
In our system, quite a few things were botched by this failure, which may be corrected in a special session, though depending what happens with the Republican leadership in Austin, notably the disagreement over school finance reform between the Lt Governor and Speaker, they may need to wait til 2007.
Over in San Marcos, their vice president of finance, said the university needs at least 300,000-square feet of space to accommodate students. Most importantly for our sister school, plans for a nursing school were also dependant on tuition revenue bonds. In total, they had about $170M blocked in this move, which included a fine arts center, communications building and over $45M in infastructure repairs.
In Beaumont, Lamar University was due to recieve $40M in funds for educational facilities. The other Lamar components were due 3.5 to 4.25M respectively for their own educational facilities. Sul Ross was due to recieve 7.5M and Angelo State was not slated to recieve anything.
You may have seen some articles and news packages about universities that were also hurt by legislative failures. In fact, there was several billion dollars that were tied up in this legislation, HB 2239, for all of those interested in the Texas Legislature. Notably, hundreds of millions of dollars that were set to the University of Texas medical branches were held up.
I think we can attribute this to President Gaertner, Vice President Parker and others involved in the fiscal issues of the university. On top of that, many of our construction projects have already been linked to bond money or are paid by other sources. At this time, we do not need to rely on the state for any growth beyond what they have already pledged, so this defeat as noted above does not impact us.
In our system, quite a few things were botched by this failure, which may be corrected in a special session, though depending what happens with the Republican leadership in Austin, notably the disagreement over school finance reform between the Lt Governor and Speaker, they may need to wait til 2007.
Over in San Marcos, their vice president of finance, said the university needs at least 300,000-square feet of space to accommodate students. Most importantly for our sister school, plans for a nursing school were also dependant on tuition revenue bonds. In total, they had about $170M blocked in this move, which included a fine arts center, communications building and over $45M in infastructure repairs.
In Beaumont, Lamar University was due to recieve $40M in funds for educational facilities. The other Lamar components were due 3.5 to 4.25M respectively for their own educational facilities. Sul Ross was due to recieve 7.5M and Angelo State was not slated to recieve anything.
posted by Jason Plotkin | 6:17 PM
<< Home