With a deadline looming to pass the budget, the House and Senate’s top budget negotiators are still apart on several higher education items.
The Senate is still asking for $50 million as a reward for Florida’s elite research schools, like the University of Florida, Florida State University, and University of South Florida.
But in its latest offer released Friday afternoon, the House hasn’t budged and wants to defund preeminent funding completely.
The Senate originally asked for $100 million for preeminent research universities.
Another split is over state colleges’ funding model and faculty recruitment/incentive. The Senate is calling for a $40 million spend while the House’s latest bump offer moved up to $15 million after previously offering zero funding.
The House supports giving $7.5 million to the Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education which is located at the University of Florida. The Senate wants to spend $2 million on it in its latest bump offer.
The House has given up seeking $300,000 on a controversial intellectual survey for the State University System of Florida to gauge if students feel they can express their views on campus. The Senate had not wanted to fund it all.
Both sides are in agreement about how much money to spend to support a new law that expands the guardian program into higher education to allow faculty and staff to carry guns and protect Florida’s public universities and state colleges. The House and Senate were in unison about two budget lines for $1.8 million and $4.2 million under “post secondary guardian program.”
Included in PECO funding was nearly $92 million to build a 164,000-square-foot engineering building at Florida A&M University/Florida State University.
“The budget is a complicated process,” Senate Appropriations Chair Ed Hooper told reporters Friday during a break as budget talks have lasted until midnight on some days. “I can tell you that both sides are going to work through the weekend including Memorial Day. We know that we have a task to finalize.”
Leaders say they can still finish before the end of May, but it could be close. A budget memo from House Speaker Daniel Perez has House Budget Chair Lawrence McClure and Senate Appropriations Chair Ed Hooper meeting at 8 a.m. Tuesday to hold talks “until completion.”
If the budget hits desks that day, it starts the constitutionally required 72-hour cooling-off period, teeing up a House floor vote Friday, May 29, with the Senate to follow before Sine Die — with a month to spare before the July 1 fiscal year.
It would be the second straight year of a drawn-out budget; last year’s wasn’t passed until June 16.