Kansas Board of Regents

Topeka ? The Kansas Board of Regents agreed Wednesday to submit a budget request for next year that does not ask for any general increase in state funding, only a restoration of the 4 percent cuts that were ordered this year.

“Our priority is trying to get that 4 percent back,” Regents Chairwoman Zoe Newton said.

In May, Gov. Sam Brownback signed a final budget bill that lawmakers had passed for the new fiscal year that began July 1. But because of continued revenue shortfalls, he immediately had to order $97 million in cuts to that budget in order to make it balance.

Nearly a third of those cuts, $30.7 million, came from the Regents universities, including $7 million from the University of Kansas campus in Lawrence, and $3.7 million from KU Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan.

“We are not unaware of the straits we are in as a state,” Newton said. “We obviously try to be sensitive, but also feel like we need to put out there what it is that we feel we need as a system, and then it’s really up to the Legislature and the governor to make those priority decisions.”

All state agencies submit budget requests to the governor’s office in the fall. The governor and his staff then will sift through those requests, accepting some and modifying others, as they put together the budget proposal that will be submitted to the Legislature in January.

Brownback is expected to submit a two-year budget proposal to the Legislature covering the fiscal years that end June 30, 2018 and 2019.

The Board of Regents had discussed its budget priorities during its annual retreat in Wichita in August. And although individual schools, including KU, mentioned certain “enhancement” projects they would like to have funded, those requests will only be included in a narrative portion of the document, not as part of the official numbers.

KU Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little said there are two items on KU’s wish list this year: $1.3 million for a new program called the Jayhawk Success Academy, which would be geared toward helping low-income and first-generation college students succeed in their first year; and $10 million over two years to expand the medical education program at the KU School of Medicine in Wichita.

“This would be a bridge program where students would come over the summer, begin their college careers early, take one or two college-level (classes) and get a jump start on their academic careers,” Gray-Little said.

Another item mentioned in the document is a proposal to establish a new dental school at the KU Medical Center. That would require about $43 million in initial start-up costs, and ongoing state funding of about $6.5 million.

But neither the Regents nor Gray-Little indicated that they held out any serious hope that the state could afford to fund that project during this budget cycle.

“I think if the fiscal situation were different, all of the universities would have had more substantial requests,” Gray-Little said. “We are trying to be cognizant of and sensitive to the situation the state is in financially, and (we) know that even with a change or turnaround, it’s going to take at least a year or two to start seeing additional funds.”