College funding bill up in air
by JORDAN BLUM - Advocate (excerpt)

Questions remain regarding whether colleges will receive their funding based on the state’s new “performance-based” formula or the state budget as approved by the Legislature, the governor’s executive counsel said Thursday. The differences in the funding distributions between the formula and the budget bill represent swings of as much as $2.66 million for schools like Southern University.

The Louisiana Board of Regents on Thursday formally adopted its “performance-based” funding formula. It bases 25 percent of state dollars allotted to individual campuses on performance measures, such as the number of annual graduates. Regents said they were well aware that the campus distributions differed significantly from what legislators decided in House Bill 1. The next fiscal year begins July 1.

Gov. Bobby Jindal’s executive counsel, Stephen Waguespack, said it is still being discussed whether Jindal can use his line-item veto authority to adjust HB1 distributions without lessening funding for higher education. “It’s a little unclear,” he said. The Legislature has constitutional authority to allocate budgets to each higher education system, but the amendments attached to HB1 in the Senate specified allocations only per campus.