CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The state’s Council for Community and Technical Colleges has approved a budget request for next fiscal year of $79.9 million, the same as the current fiscal year.
Higher Education Chancellor Dr. Sarah Armstrong Tucker said the Justice administration asked that the request not change.
“As per the past several years, we’ve been asked to keep our budget flat this year and we have done that,” Tucker said at last week’s council meeting. “We’re not asking for any increases.”
Gov. Jim Justice proposed and the legislature agreed to use surplus funds for some of the community and technical colleges in the current budget year. Tucker said they’ll ask that be changed back to the way it was before.
“For most of the institutions 1.5% of their budgets were put into surplus revenue, to be funded out of surplus revenue. We’re requesting basically that the 1.5% go back to general revenue,” Tucker said.
The $79.9 million request is made up of $15.7 million to operate several community and technical college programs including the free tuition providing by the West Virginia Invests Grant Program, which is a $7 million request.
The remaining part of the request, $64.1 million is the total proposed budgets from various community and technical colleges ranging from the low $2.1 million from Eastern West Virginia CTC to a high of $10.3 million from WVU at Parkersburg.
Gov. Justice will propose the budget to state lawmakers in next year’s session and lawmakers will eventually vote on the new spending plan that will take effect July 1, 2022.