Bill to give Kentucky State $23M to cover budget shortfall passes in House
A bill giving Kentucky State University $23 million to sustain the university this year passed in the Kentucky House on Thursday.
HB 250 passed 82-7 and will now go before the Senate. The bill includes requirements for the funds given to KSU, including the Council on Postsecondary Education overseeing use of the money and a repayment plan. The university and CPE also will create a management improvement plan, to be submitted to the legislature by Nov. 1, with financial reports regularly given to the legislature over the next several years.
KSU is the only public historically Black university in the state, and is also a land grant university. Rep. James Tipton, R-Taylorsville, the sponsor of the bill, said it is needed to protect the future of the university.
Without the $23 million, university administrators have said they do not have the funds to operate the university past April. Additionally, KSU will need to cut $7 million from its budget for the next fiscal year, CPE President Aaron Thompson said earlier this week.
“The legislation does set accountability, responsibility and transparency for our institution here in Frankfort,” Tipton said Thursday, adding that the bill “is about the students who are currently at Kentucky State University.”
The $23 million is a loan to the university, which could be forgivable in the future, Tipton said.
Rep. Derrick Graham, D-Frankfort, spoke in support of the bill, saying KSU is “a beacon of higher education both in Kentucky and across the United States.” Graham, a KSU graduate, said that while legislators cannot change the past of the university, they can impact its future.
“As we prepare to write the next chapter of Kentucky State University’s story, let us not let the current situation deter us,” Graham said.
KSU was placed under state oversight last year, with CPE conducting an investigation into the management and finances of the university. Former president M. Christopher Brown II resigned last summer, along with the former CFO Douglas Allen. Since then, concerns have been raised about Brown’s financial management at KSU.
At a CPE meeting in November, the new CFO Greg Rush said the university previously had an “overall lack of budgetary control, pretty much top to bottom,” including overspending in the president’s office by $850,000 one year.
CPE also found that the university would frequently not pay vendors and had significant debts to pay off. In CPE’s report, some KSU staff members were “told to ‘not answer their phones’ when vendors called.”
KSU is currently conducting a search for a new president, with the goal of naming the hire later this spring.