As I said earlier, lawmakers got a line by line look at the budget reductions this morning. We’ve talked about the big cuts: the $55 million from higher ed, the $62 million personnel reduction, etc. But how does that add up to $468 million? It doesn’t. This new budget is comprised of dozens of cuts…a hundred thousand here and few million there. Here are some examples.
-$1 million from the Mouse Genome Consortium at the UT Health Science Center
-$400,000 from a grant for the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces
-$1.2 million from the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Smyrna Residential Camp
-$333,200 from Bicentennial mall maintenance and staffing, including 3 full time positions
-$100,100 from Education for the Governor’s Study Partners program
There are some other things that are being cut from the budget and appropriated elsewhere. The “Boll Weevil Eradication Program”, which was maligned in the 2008 Pork Report, is being taken out of the budget. However, it will be funded out the Agricultural Enhancement Fund.
We’ve been wondering how this adds up!
I would like reporters such as yourself to ask the governer these questions concerning the budget:
1. Your administration keeps reporting that the budget shortfall is because of the weak economy. Isn’t tax revenue collections this year higher than last year when the state collected more than $800 million surplus?
2. If revenue is up over a record year, why are we needing budget cuts? Could the administration have mismanaged the budget by spending 4% more than was collected last year and now the taxpayers are being punished for it even though they paid more taxes than last year?
3. Speaker Naifeh blamed the budget shortfall on Bush’s economy. How can he say this when tax collection exceeds last year’s? Isn’t Naifeh and the administration at fault because they implemented new programs that required millions of new funds?
3. Instead of punishing everyone because the state over spent, why not just cut the new programs that caused the shortfall?
4. Since the state legislature and the current administration did such a poor job with the budget, shouldn’t they offer themselves a buyout?
I have not heard any reporter challenge Naifeh or the governer blaming everyone else for the budget short fall. They continue to mislead the public and no one calls them on it. The good citizens and hard working taxpayers deserve better!