State university officials say they’ll have to cut budgets despite new taxes approved by the Legislature last week.

“I hope that for many individual students the impact will be small,” said Kim Wilcox, executive director of the Kansas Board of Regents. “But overall on the institutions the impact will be real  real in terms of infrastructure, real in terms of planning for the future. It makes us less able to be effective in future years.”

According to figures prepared by Board of Regents staff, state funding for higher education in Kansas  including universities, community colleges, technical colleges and the Board of Regents office  totals almost $707 million for the fiscal year beginning July 1. That’s $300,000 more than the current budget.

But that figure doesn’t include approximately $3 million in “global cuts” to state universities under Senate Bill 517. That bill ordered cuts in areas such as travel expenses, vehicles and furniture in all state agencies.

It also didn’t provide $14.2 million in increases regents had hoped would pay for annual salary increases and rising insurance costs.

Kansas University’s Lawrence campus will receive $138.7 million from the state during the next fiscal year, and KU Medical Center will receive $104.7 million. Those numbers are the same as this year.

KU’s share of the global cuts will be about $752,320 at the Lawrence campus and $461,438 at the Medical Center, according to the regents office. The unfunded employer costs amount to $3.8 million at the Lawrence campus and $2.1 million at the Medical Center.

The bottom line is employees at KU  including faculty members  won’t see salary increases next year, and university support services will be cut, said Theresa Klinkenberg, KU’s chief business and financial planning officer.

“I’m not sure what the percentages will end up being, but we will protect the academic side as we typically do in this type of situation and we’ll have a higher percentage (of cuts) for the support services side,” Klinkenberg said.

Tuition increases this fall may help offset the cuts. KU officials’ 25.2 percent increase in tuition for undergraduate Kansas residents would generate an additional $16.4 million for KU. About $2.2 million of that will be spent on financial aid.

But Lynn Bretz, a KU spokeswoman, said cuts would still be needed because the tuition money wasn’t intended to “patch holes in the state budget.” While some departments receive more money, others may be cut.

“The idea was to provide enhancements on top of what the university offers now,” Bretz said. “It’s definitely a dilemma. It would be worse not to have the tuition increase.”

Dick Carter, the regents’ director of external relations, said universities would suffer with the cuts. But, he said, the higher education budget situation appeared worse at times during the legislative session.

“It’s not as bad as it could’ve been,” he said. “But even though it would appear our budget is flat, the cost of providing an education continues to go up. We’re not moving the product forward. It costs more to provide an education, but we’re doing it with less money.”