Community colleges get funds back

AUSTIN — Community colleges will get back all $154 million Gov. Rick Perry vetoed from their 2009 budgets under a deal announced Tuesday.

The announcement came as a relief to leaders at South Texas College, which would have lost $4 million under the veto, said Diana Pena, vice president for finance and administrative services at STC.

Perry began negotiating with Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Tom Craddick on how to restore the money after his June veto caused an outcry from community colleges and lawmakers. Perry said college leaders had been dishonest in submitting their budgets and they were getting too much money for employee health insurance.

State leaders agreed to restore the money for 2009, but to re-evaluate how to pay for health insurance in future budgets.

STC did not raise tuition or cut programs after the veto, instead choosing to wait and see whether the money would be restored. The news Tuesday means STC won’t have to raise rates or cut back in the next two years, Pena said.

But the new health-care calculations could eventually mean STC would get less money from the state, Pena said.

“There’s still questions because we don’t exactly know what’s going to happen or what’s going to be recommended for the next biennium,” Pena said.

Perry, Craddick and Dewhurst also agreed to develop a way to give community colleges incentive money based on how students improve from one year to the next.

Even though his veto is reversed, Perry considered the deal a success since it led to a discussion among leaders about how the state pays for community college employees’ health insurance, said spokeswoman Krista Moody.

“I think that we’ve seen the result of the governor’s decision to veto these funds, to create a consensus that was never there before,” she said.

Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen, who was on a committee to study ways to restore the funding, praised the compromise since students will avoid higher tuition rates.

“Working families have been squeezed enough,” he said.

Perry will appoint a task force to study how to develop a plan for incentive funding. The task force will give recommendations to the Legislature by 2009, Moody said.