LANSING ? Michigan Fiscal year 2007-08 supplemental budgets for both school financing and the overall general fund budget passed the Senate unanimously on Thursday, the last day the Senate would be in session for two weeks.

Changes made by the Senate to both HB 5344 and HB 5531 mean the bills will have to clear the House before they can be enacted into law. The House returns to session on April 8.

HB 5344 totals $134.7 million, with $39.1 million, in general funds. Most of the general fund portion of the budget goes to the Department of Community Health to repay the federal government over a dispute on school-based clinics.

Another $11 million is added to the Department of Environmental Quality as a funding shift. The budget also reduces $10.75 million from DEQ that was expected in fee increase revenues. No agreement on fee increases has been reached.

The budget also includes $10 million to pay for the January 15 presidential primary.

Adopted into the budget, and costing nothing (which helped make it popular), was a call to the Department of Treasury to develop a new cigarette tax stamp program using digital stamps.

HB 5531, for state school aid, actually reduces overall spending by $108.4 million, $105.1 million from the School Aid Fund, because of lower student population counts.

But the budget does include an extra $4.7 million to ensure that districts receive at least their prior-year funded amounts for school readiness programs, $3.3 million to create an assessment item test bank, $2 million for school bond loan fund debt service and $1.3 million for grants to sparsely populated, rural districts.

In acting on the bill, though, the Senate rejected a series of amendments to boost spending for early childhood education.

TARGET SETTING: State leaders would have to agree on budget targets by May 30 of each year under SB 1117 which passed the Senate on a 30-8 vote Thursday.

Under the measure if the governor, the legislative leaders and chairs of the legislative appropriations committees failed to reach agreement on budget targets for the upcoming fiscal year then they would have to meet continuously until agreement is reached.

Opponents to the bill said it did not provide enough flexibility for leaders to reach agreement by putting a fixed deadline to the target agreement.

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