Wyoming Community Colleges had braced for 8-percent cuts at Governor Mead’s request. But last week, Mead announced that his budget proposal would require them to cut only 6-percent from their operating budgets.
Jim Rose of the Wyoming Community College Commission says this will lessen the blow for all colleges. Rose says limiting the budget cut to 6-percent will save the colleges more overall than the requested funds would have offered, and it’s more egalitarian.
“The governor’s action means that those funds are gonna be redistributed in our funding formula to all seven colleges, whereas our exception budget would have been restricted to only colleges where enrollment had increased,” says Rose.
The governor did deny the commission’s one-time exception request for additional funding to certain colleges whose enrollment increased during the past few years.
