State budget update Campus Message

Campus Community,

State legislative leaders who have been negotiating the last several days agreed to a final version of the proposed two-year budget for the state and sent it to the Governor for his consideration.

It is, as always, a complex document, particularly during a time when policymakers are trying to hold down expenses. Most state agencies, for example, would receive cuts over the next two years.

Most universities, including UK, are receiving budget reductions as well, even as lawmakers are also investing in critical infrastructure across our campus.

We are still reviewing the details. Here’s what we know right now:

• The budget agreed to by House and Senate leaders would reduce our state funding for each of the next two years by about 2 to 3 percent, about $6 million in the fiscal year beginning July 1 and would increase to more than $11 million the following fiscal year.
• Legislative leaders did not reduce funding to the Performance Funding Model. That’s the pool of funds allocated to each public university based on how we perform in meeting the state’s top priorities — enrolling and graduating more students and preparing them for careers in Kentucky’s top workforce priority areas, among other key metrics.
• The budget contains state support, the details of which we are still reviewing, for what we are calling the Healthy Kentucky Research Building II – a second research facility in the midst of our growing biomedical and health care complex devoted to the state’s most significant health challenges.
• There are also dollars from the state for the “asset preservation program” — the initiative that has enabled us in recent years to renovate facilities throughout our academic core, such as the White Hall Classroom Building.
• The proposed budget also contains authorization, which is required by the state, for UK to spend its own resources on a number of infrastructure projects on our campus, including the Fine Arts District. We announced a $150 million gift for this exciting project last year from The Bill Gatton Foundation.

Budgets as large and complex as that of the Commonwealth are always a product of compromise among so many competing and important state needs. Finite resources mean tough decisions. This one is no different: numbers shifted and changed from the Governor’s proposed budget to those of the House and Senate and then, finally, a conference committee composed of leaders from both chambers.

As always, we deeply respect the work our elected leaders do, their faith in us as reflected in important investments they make and also the expectations they have of us to heal, help and serve as our state and our nation face growing economic headwinds.

Regardless of where we are year to year, and budget to budget, our work – to advance Kentucky in all that we do – will continue. It must. That mission, important to so many across our state, is why we are here. And if we remain firmly fixed on that goal, and that mission, we will always find ways to do and be more for the state we were created to serve.

Thank you for all you do to make that mission so relevant and important today and all days.

Eli Capilouto
President