With the state’s higher education institutions facing upwards of $350 million in cuts to help fill a projected $1.4 billion hole in next year’s state budget, university officials are putting pencil to paper to determine just how serious the damage could be—and what they’re coming up with isn’t pretty.
Thursday, State Senate President John Alario suggested as many as 16 campuses could be closed, including the Pennington Biomedical Research Center. While that’s admittedly a worst-case scenario, LSU officials are trying to figure out what a reduction of 35% to 40% would do to their budgets.
Vice President for Agriculture Bill Richardson says that while the College of Agriculture may be able to absorb some of the cuts by raising tuition, the LSU AgCenter would be “decimated.”
“That means closure of units, closure of offices around the state and a lot of layoffs,” Richardson says. “I’m heavily invested in people and don’t have a lot of paper clips or rubber bands left to cut.”
Richardson says a 35% reduction to his $40 million annual budget would mean some $14 million in cuts, leaving his budget at around $26 million. On the chopping block could be 4-H programs, agriculture extension outreach and dozens of other offerings.
“The really bad part is we’ve already been cut every year for the past seven years,” Richardson says. “So in seven years I’ve gone from $90 million to $40 million. This would be really drastic.”
The state budget was already facing a significant shortfall before the price of oil began tumbling late last year, and now it’s possible the $1.4 billion budget gap could widen further if prices remain low in the new year. At roughly $50 per barrel as of this morning, oil is selling for about half of what it was when state lawmakers passed the budget last summer. The Joint Legislative Budget Committee meets this morning to discuss the pending budget crisis and how revenues from oil production may affect it. Later this month, the Legislative Fiscal Office is expected to release a revised estimate of next year’s revenues. —Stephanie Riegel
