Yay! We found some money!
So, a few months ago Michigan’s government shutdown for a few hours because we couldn’t pass a budget, we got back online, and then magically discovered that instead of just breaking even we ran a surplus this year.
Hobos pay better attention to their finances than these guys.
Anyway, it looks like state universities are going to get a 3% increase in funding this year. Guess we found some extra money for them after all.
Now, here’s where I do a double take:
Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm wants to base the increase on factors such as how much research is done and how many students graduate. That formula would give some schools more than 6 percent more and others just over 2 percent more.
Well, mark this date on the calendar. I actually agree with a Democrat on matters related to fiscal policy! Giving the higher performers more money? Yeah, I’m all for it!
The Republican-led Senate prefers an across-the-board increase.It passed the university spending bill 37-1 on Tuesday and sent it to the House, which will start working on university funding next month.
Based on that I have a gut feeling that 3% across the board was cheaper, or at least easier to compute. With the vote being 37-1 I’m leaning heavily towards easier to compute.
And, sadly, I’m OK with that. The legislature has already shown their epic inability to predict state revenue so if they want to try and keep their cost prediction models down to the level of 5th grade math on this matter that’s fine with me.
I can’t imagine the mess they would create if they actually tried applying mathematic models that required a high school education.