LANSING – Majority Senate Republicans are offering a proposed compromise that would resolve the current year 2009-10 budget deficit as well as the budget for the 2010-11 fiscal year that begins October 1 using a variety of measures to lessen cuts that previously passed the Senate for 2010-11.

The proposal, provided to Gongwer News Service, would resolve the $300 million current year deficit in the general fund by shifting $206 million from the School Aid Fund surplus to the general fund and moving $94 million federal funding given to the states to help with state costs on the Medicare drug coverage program into the 2009-10 fiscal year. This move would still leave a year-end balance of $165.6 million in the School Aid Fund.

Then, turning to the 2010-11 fiscal year, the Senate GOP proposal essentially assumes passage of the Senate budgets, which contain a number of controversial cuts to community colleges, higher education, revenue sharing and health care.

But those cuts would be softened from how they passed the Senate.

The major move would be to reduce the general fund contribution to the School Aid Fund by $195.4 million, leaving a $30 million general fund contribution to school aid. And there would be $26 million more moved from the 21st Century Jobs Fund into the general fund.

These extra funds would enable reducing by half the cuts to the colleges, universities and revenue sharing. Universities and colleges would be cut by 1.55 percent each instead of 3.1 percent. The revenue sharing cut also would drop in half. K-12 schools would see no cuts.

Cuts to the Department of Community Health would fall from $96 million to $84 million.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop (R-Rochester) told Gongwer in an interview this morning that the budget protects key priorities without raising new revenue.

“The strength is that it actually uses the money we have,” he said. “For far too long in budgeting, we have proposals that create revenue, that use accounting gimmicks, that borrow against the future, that create one solution and a far bigger problem.”

Bishop said he hopes that House Democrats, after they receive the proposal today, will back off their proposal to securitize some of the state’s tobacco settlement revenues as a budget-balancing mechanism. He repeated his characterization of such a proposal as deeply irresponsible.

This story was provided by Gongwer News Service. To subscribe, click on Gongwer.Com

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