State budget deadline looming

The possibility of state government shutting down is a frightening thought. But if the Indiana General Assembly does not pass the new state budget for 2009 by midnight Tuesday, that is exactly what could happen.

Matt Doerr, the legislative assistant for state Sen. Brent Steele, said though many of the states services would stop, the basic services of protection would not.
“All employees of legislation will not be working, but the police, the jails, the firehouses, that will all still be open,” he said.

One major problem that would arise would be that of food stamps and unemployment. With the economy in such poor shape, many Indiana citizens have claimed unemployment after losing their jobs.

According to a press release on the state of Indiana’s Department of Workforce Web site, unemployment claims rose from 5.3 percent in May of 2008 to 10.6 percent in May 2009.

If the budget were to fail to be passed, no new claims for unemployment or for food stamps could be claimed as their would be no one to process the claims. This means those who lose their jobs after today would not be able to claim for unemployment until a new budget is ratified.

Ressa Kossoff, the media relations director for the Indiana House Democrats, said there are still a few snags to be negotiated in the budget.

“The main point of contention in budget negotiations is the public school funding formula,” Kossoff said. “House Democrats have been fighting to ensure that no school district receives less funding than it did the year before, which is commonly referred to as a “hold harmless” provision. The Senate budget slashes the budgets of many rural and urban school districts. The biggest loser would be Indianapolis Public Schools, which would suffer a budget cut of $41 million.”

Kossoff did say that though many state services – parks, casinos, the Hoosier Lottery, branches of the BMV – would shut down, she echoed what Doerr said in that essential services such as the state police and the Department of Corrections that handles prisons would remain operational.

What this all means for Indiana University students is that without the state budget, and without knowing how much state funding it will receive, IU will have difficulties setting the tuition rate for 2010.

Carol McCord, the IU interim Associate Dean of Students, thinks that the budget failing to pass could be a major problem for families looking at where to send their kids to school.

“We have students trying to come here, and they don’t know what it will cost,” she said. “We are in orientation, and school is about to start and we don’t know what the bill will be for these families.”

Kossoff said the legislature has two separate plans that are dramatically different in educational funding. The republican plan will cut educational funding by 4 percent and the democratic plan with increase funding by 2 percent. Depending on which plan passes, students could have a dramatically different cost of tuition.

“We can just guess what the bill will be, but depending on what the state gives us, we will most likely be wrong,” McCord said. “The administration is very sorry to the families that this is the situation we are in,” she said. “But our hands are tied and we can’t do any thing about it.”