Legislative Priorities Video
A new classroom building, Bucks for Brains, maintenance and operation of buildings and increasing overall state funding are the University of Louisville's top priorities for the 2010 session of the Kentucky General Assembly. UofL President James Ramsey says state funding for the four initiatives is vital for the university to keep moving toward is goal of becoming a preeminent metropolitan research institution.
2010 UofL Legislative Priorities from univoflouisville on Vimeo. Video with Closed Captioning.
Transcript: 2010 UofL Legislative Priorities
Ramsey: First, we're supporting the recommendations made by the Council on Post-Secondary Education, and number one is what they call technical adjustments. That's 36 million dollars in the biennium. The biggest technical adjustment that affects UofL is maintenance and operation money for the two new research buildings that have been built at UofL and have opened, but we have to pay "M" and "O" costs on, and that's our Clinical and Translational Research Building downtown, and our Safety Lab on our Shelby Campus. The reason this is so important is that, throughout the history of the Commonwealth, up until 2008, if the General Assembly authorized a new building, they would come around later, and authorize the maintenance and operation expense for that building. They didn't do that in 2008, so that's a scary precedent for us.
Secondly, the CP is calling the increase in base funding: funding for strategic initiatives. They didn't want to stay that we are restoring cuts, but rather that the money will be base increase, will be used for strategic initiatives, and that is increasing retention rates and graduation rates, and graduating more students.
The third reccomendation of the Council does deal with capital construction, and as strange as that may seem, in a tough budget you know and I know that capital projects are important politically and that with bond funding you can authorize that project in one bienneum and really not pay for it until the next biennium. The University of Louisville is one of two campuses that currently has a classroom space deficiency, and so in the capital construction request of the CPE, there's a new classroom building at the University of Louisville. That's important to us, we need more classroom space.
And fourth, at the University of Louisville, going beyond the CPE, we need to keep Bucks for Brains alive. That has been transformational for us at the University of Louisville, so you'll continue to hear us talk in a tough fiscal environment this session about Bucks for Brains, Bucks for Brains, the importance of Bucks for Brains. We understand the state of the economy, we understand the fiscal environment, you know we've been there and have had to make budgets in tough times. We can't cut our way to growth and success in Kentucky, and it's going to require some tough issues, looking under every rock for additional revenue, reallocating from lower priority programs to education, both K through 12 and higher education, and that's the key to this state. So we understand that it's going to be tough, politically it's going to be very tough, but if we're going to move this state forward we have to invest in education.
