As planned, Governor Ed Rendell announced his budget proposals today for the 2010-2011 fiscal year in the Commonwealth and proposed $333.9 million in appropriations for Penn State.


This is the first of a million steps in the appropriations process for Penn State that must be taken before the university receives its funding. Over the next few months, university officials must meet with state legislators in order to come up with a final spending plan by weighing the university’s costs and needs.


President Graham Spanier plans to go before the House Appropriations Committee on Feb. 23 and the Senate Appropriations Committee on March 3.


After last year’s near-explosive financial dilemma, lets hope that everything gets worked out in an ordered and timely fashion, like a good fire drill.

Friday afternoon at the Penn State Hershey Medical Center, a group of  dignitaries including Penn State President Graham Spanier and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell were on hand for the groundbreaking ceremony of the new Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital. The $207 million facility will be LEED certified and will be funded in part by the state of Pennsylvania, which allocated $14 million of public improvement funds to the hospital, says Penn State Live. The Hershey Corporation chipped in another $1 million (bringing the total amount of their  financial support of the hospital to $62 million), and the Penn State IFC/PHC Dance Marathon …

As it looks right now, students of Penn State are facing an ADDITIONAL tuition increase next semester. And for this, we can thank the Pennsylvania legislature, which has yet to pass legislation on casino table games that would generate revenue to cover appropriations, such as the funds that Penn State still has not received. Therefore, if Penn State doesn’t get these funds soon, perhaps even by the end of this week, the University will be forced to raise tuition as soon as this coming spring.
With tuition already as high as it is, another increase would put an unwarranted financial strain …

On Tuesday, Penn State and three other public universities in the state announced that the delay in approval of table-games legislature could increase tuition rates as early as January. The state left nearly $700 million out of the budget signed by Governor Rendell in October, and made it contingent on the table-games bill being passed.
In a response to a letter of complaint from the colleges, House Speaker Keith McCall said, “This bill needs to be done right the first time, and, like a college education, cannot be rushed without potentially causing more harm than good to the future.” He stated …

Well sock us sideways, if the P.A. State Legislature didn’t finally pass a budget that was over 100 days overdue – and Penn State doesn’t get to see a dime yet! We’ve been waiting longer for this budget to pass than Forrest Gump did for that sleaze Jenny to wander back home and we’re no closer to seeing any green than a meerkat in the Mohave.
It’s a shame the people of Pennsylvania can’t take the mob’s approach on money that’s overdue to them.
More disheartening is the fact that Penn State and other Pennsylvania state-related schools can’t receive their appropriation until a pending bill is passed that would allow table games, such as blackjack …

All in, the average underclassman will see a $1,040 increase in his final bill this year. This is about at 4.8% increase in total cost from last year.
But, if you recall one of our earlier posts, Penn State reported a “record number of donations in fiscal 2008-09.”
The increase might not be as impressive as they’d like you to think, but at least it’s all going to the right place: student scholarships.
The press release had this to say about the current campaign,
The campaign’s top priority is scholarship support for students. About $150 million of total campaign commitments has been secured for …

Penn State students have followed with varying degrees of interest this summer’s budget battles: one between the Democrats and Republicans within Pennsylvania’s state government and another between Governor Ed Rendell and Graham Spanier. The former was over the state’s budget and the latter an argument about the very identity of Penn State: are we public or private?
We don’t have a good answer for you– we’re not even sure what we are– but over the past few months many students and parents were unaware of this tussle. Now, however, they are seeing its effects first hand as bills begin to call for attention. …

The Board of Trustees met on Thursday in New Kensington.
By the Penn State Live release, you’d think they ignored the most important issue the university was facing: the drastic reduction in state appropriations. Veblen noted that Spanier’s speech was “much happy talk.”
But the university began releasing statements today about the plans for next year.
The board has accepted two budgets. The first budget is based on state budgets released by Governor Ed Rendell in March. That budget specified for a 4.5% tuition increase.
The second budget, based on the updated state budget Rendell released just last month, is both bleaker and more …

Graham Spanier is calling in favors… or trying to, at least.
He sent a letter (PDF) to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan about Governor Rendell’s recent exclusion of Penn State and other state-related universities from federal stimulus money.
By arbitrarily re-defining The Pennsylvania State University as non-public, simply because we are not “under the absolute control of the Commonwealth,” the Governor is setting a dangerous precedent that the Department of Education should address. If the Department approves this application as it is written, it gives governors in every other state the ability to pick and choose which public institutions they may support …

Governor’s Reduction
Governor Ed Rendell released the latest of his increasingly drastic budget reductions for the 2009 fiscal year. The governor has now reduced the budget proposal by $2 billion dollars.
Overall, 229 line items would be impacted by the latest round of spending reductions. Compared to the current fiscal year, the Governor has now cut three out of every four line items, totally eliminating 163 of them and reducing another 328.
One of the details in the most recent revision, which was released on Thursday, is that the public-related institutions will not be receiving federal stimulus money, resulting in a loss of …