In response to a mandate to state agencies to reduce their expenditures for 2010-2011, Prairie View A&M University will return $5.5 million from the $142 million appropriation it received for the biennium from the state.
Mary Lee Hodge, senior vice president for business affairs, said the budget cut came after the state’s Legislative Budget Board and the Office of the Governor’s Budget’s Planning and Policy Division mandated every state agency to return at least five percent of items of appropriations, and Comptroller Susan Combs referred to state revenues as “weakened substantially as the national recession began exerting its full influence on Texas.”
Hodge said, “We have to cut our budget in order to meet the state’s requirements. We’re committed to doing that in the least intrusive way that we can on the student population. The state asked us to do so in that manner, and even if they hadn’t, that is what our president and all of us at Prairie View would’ve wanted done.”
The mandate from the Legislative Budget Board excluded reductions that would impact state agencies’ direct services.
According to Prairie View A&M University’s plan, the majority of funds given back for state appropriations for this fiscal year will be taken from salary savings from vacant positions.
Allocations for special item support, which include student nurse stipends, honors programs, institutional enhancement, agriculture extension and research, and juvenile crime prevention will bear the five percent cut on their own since they are not part of the general appropriation.