UNIVERSITY PARK — Seven months and counting and Penn State, along with the Pennsylvania’s three other state-related universities, has yet to see its state appropriations.
When Gov. Tom Wolf first announced his budget plans for the 2015-16 fiscal year, he said Penn State would pick up an extra $49 million in funding. But Wolf’s administration and the Republican-led majority are now more than 200 days into a back-and-forth budget dispute that has bottled up funding to state-related schools.
That has students frustrated and concerned that the state’s record-long budget stalemate could impact students receiving loans through the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency and could increase tuition rates, despite Penn State’s in-state tuition freeze this year — the first in almost 50 years.
On Jan. 30, the University Park Undergraduate Association met with other state-related universities to re-establish the Pennsylvania Association of State-Related Students to lobby government officials to end the budget stalemate and release previously agreed-upon appropriations. The three other universities that receive state aid are the University of Pittsburgh, Temple University and Lincoln University.
“We are trying to create an active voice; that is our first step,” said UPUA president Emily McDonald.
On Feb. 11, UPUA and student leaders from other universities sent letters with the accompanying PASS resolution to Wolf and members of the state legislature.
“Upon electing you as Governor, we were optimistic about the prospects for an increase in our appropriation,” McDonald said in her letter. “Instead, your inability to lead the state budget negotiations has created an even more detrimental fiscal situation for our university, as we have now been without an appropriation for over seven months.”
After a $30.8 billion budget agreement collapsed before Christmas, Wolf line-item vetoed the $30.3 billion budget that GOP leaders passed instead without a revenue code. Wolf pushed forward about $24 billion in much-needed emergency funding to help school districts, social services and counties ramp back up to normal footing in 2016.
But, Wolf held up more than $6 billion of unappropriated funds and $500 million in university subsidies to keep the pressure on Republican lawmakers to pass the original November bipartisan agreement that helps close the deficit gap that is estimated to reach almost $2 billion next fiscal year.
When the House reconvened after the holidays, House Democrats voted to block a move to release $578 million in funding to state-related universities. They said that they would not push forward those funds until a final budget package is passed with a revenue plan that includes a variety of tax increases aimed at reducing the structural deficit.
“Our state funding comes to us through a ‘non-preferred’ appropriations bill, and the state is having difficulty even managing the basic budget because of contention over how to generate revenues and how much revenue must be generated,” Penn State President Eric Barron wrote in a blog post.
While Penn State has still not received its general fund appropriations, the state did pass funding for PHEAA despite UPUA’s letter urging legislators to release PHEAA state aid for students in financial need.
“Penn State currently supports students who receive PHEAA loans through our endowment, but this is not a sustainable practice,” McDonald said in her letter to Wolf. “If this trend continues, students will face destabilizing financial burdens, which could lead to an increase in the percentage of college drop-outs.”
Because PHEAA could not disburse the money without a state budget, Penn State allocated temporary funds into students’ bursar accounts. However, the state grant dollars were released in January when Wolf blue lined the GOP budget, said Keith New, a spokesperson for PHEAA.
“Schools credited students knowing the budget would be passed at some point,” New said. “Near the end of January all the grants had been dispersed in the amount the universities were expecting.”
Funding to PHEAA was reduced 11 percent to $305 million, so the PHEAA board of directors passed a resolution to draw up to an additional $50 million from its reserve funds to honor the award estimates it gave to universities in the spring.
Cindy Heaton, the senior manager for student aid compliance at Penn State’s Office of Student Aid, confirmed that the university dispersed pending state grants to students.
While grants were dispersed later than usual for both the spring and fall semester, Heaton said, “Everything came together over the last couple of weeks.”
