The Minnesota State Board of Trustees approved a legislative supplemental budget request at their meeting on November 15. The supplemental budget request is $31 million in total; $21 million to fund the Integrated Statewide Records System (ISRS) and $10 million for direct campus support. The $21 million for ISRS will fully fund the request made as part of Minnesota State's 2017 budget request. As part of the new request, the system will drop a requirement campuses match legislative funding for ISRS. This is a big victory for our campuses. The $10 million for direct campus support fills the gap from that was appropriated in 2017 of the $143 million campus support request.
On October 31, Chancellor Malhotra sent a memo with a proposed supplemental budget request of $8.5 million for ISRS and $10 million in campus support. If funded as proposed, the campuses would have been required to match any legislatively appropriated funds for ISRS. This would have caused additional stress on campus budgets and the IFO strongly opposed this.
In response, a coalition of bargaining units and students sent a letter opposing the proposed supplemental budget request. Due to the joint response, the supplemental budget request was altered to address concerns shared by the six organizations who cosigned the letter.
The IFO Government Relations Committee (GRC) and Board of Directors will help determine the organization’s official position on the Minnesota State supplemental budget request prior to the 2018 legislative session which will kick-off on February 20.
If you wish to share your feelings on the supplemental budget or any other legislative issues please visit our GRC webpage and contact your campus reps. We encourage you to reach out and let your campus reps know what issues you are facing as it relates to our work at the Capitol.
If you have any other questions please contact me at bohn@ifo.org.
P.S. In the joint letter to the Board of Trustees the IFO inadvertently used an incomplete draft of our logo that did not include a star for Southwest Minnesota State University (SMSU). We have great pride in our faculty at SMSU and apologize for that oversight. It has been corrected.