Niki Kelly, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an article on the Indiana budget bill entitled House, governor trade jabs on budget. The governor regards it as a “political document,” setting things up for negotiations later. The bill provides for full-day kindergarten, something the governor supports. However, it also provides for average budget growth of 4% per year, up from the Governor’s recommended 3.8%. The prediction is that revenues will grow by 4.2%. But, the bill does so by flat-lining Medicaid expenditures — an unrealistic assumption.
Education funding is increased in the Democratic budget proposal. While not going so much with the Republican-preferred education funding formula that basically has a fixed amount per student, the Democrats did depart from the automatic increase for all school districts regardless of enrollment. Instead, their plan “puts more money into the complexity index, which is weighted heavily toward students who require more resources to teach because of various societal factors such as income and parental status. The change largely aids urban school districts.”
There is a lot more in there, and I highly recommend the article. Ms. Kelly does good work.
Technorati Tags: budget
[…] He has also stated that, because of their opposition to the sale of the Hoosier Lottery, Democrats either don’t care about higher education and it’s potential benefits to the state, or they are playing political games. For more in-depth coverage of this topic, see Masson’s Blog. […]