(KAIR)--A bill that seeks to address a projected more than $330 million shortfall in this year's state budget will be debated on the House floor Tuesday.
The budget-balancing measure was passed out of the House Appropriations Committee Monday on a voice vote.
However, State Representative Jerry Henry thinks there is a major problem with the bill, in that it proposes to divert funding from state schools. He says that “The Governor and the majority of the members on the House Appropriations Committee decided not to pay a $60 million bill that we have...what we call caseloads, additional students that are in the school system. On September 20th, a headcount is taken, and if a school district has an increase in children to educate, then the state, by statute, is supposed to pay them the extra funding they are deemed. This bill does not pay them, which means that those school districts that had an increase in students, or an increase in weightings will not be paid.”
The bill also only leaves an ending balance of about $10 million which Henry says is very scary as it leaves very little room for error, and “If we have any type of reduction in our tax receipts...last Friday, for January, we were $47 million short of our estimate, and that puts us like at $59 million for the fiscal year, and so if we lose another ten or fifteen million dollars this year between now and June 30th, we will have to go back and do another rescission bill. We are really right on the edge of not being able to pay our bills.”
Legislators will also be discussing how they will be able to adequately fund the government for the next five to six months. Henry says they want to make sure that state employees are able to be paid on time.
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