The 2009 budget the House adopted this week strips $1.5 million that Gov. Sonny Perdue had requested for the design of ASU’s planned Ray Charles Fine Arts Center.
However, lawmakers did include a much larger piece of funding — $9.15 million — earmarked for design and construction of Building K at Albany Technical College, a major priority for local political and business leaders.
House budget writers were forced to cut $245 million from the $21.4 billion budget Perdue recommended in January after the governor lowered his revenue estimate for fiscal year 2009, which begins July 1.
Perdue scaled back the revenue forecast this month after the latest monthly report showed state tax collections slowing because of the economic downturn.
“We’re not in a recession,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Ben Harbin told his colleagues Thursday as he presented the House budget. “(But) we’re going to ask everybody to tighten up until we see what this slowdown looks like.”
Harbin, R-Evans, said the budget committee considered the ASU project of lesser priority than many other building projects being requested by the state university system because it is for design work.
“Design is typically putting together what it’s going to look like, not the construction phase,” he said. “It’s probably needed, but right now, we’ve got other needs to meet.”
But Rep. Freddie Powell Sims, D-Albany, whose House district includes the ASU campus, said design work is a critical component of any building project.
“You’ve got to have design money before you construct,” Sims said Friday. “You have to begin somewhere.”
Sims said the fine arts center would contain classroom space that ASU needs.
“We wouldn’t come and ask for something that’s not going to benefit the students,” she said. “This is something that we definitely need.”
Rep. Richard Royal, R-Camilla, a member of the Appropriations Committee, suggested that Albany’s legislative delegation should be satisfied with landing the Building K project, which the Albany Area Chamber of Commerce has been pushing since last year.
“We all know Building K was the top priority for the Albany community,” Royal said.
Building K would allow Albany Tech to expand its logistics program and provide a new home for the school’s library and its culinary arts and hotel and restaurant management programs.
During last year’s session, the Senate added the Building K project to the current budget. But the funding didn’t make it into the final version of the 2008 spending plan.
Royal said Sims should have appeared before Appropriations’ Higher Education Subcommittee if she wanted to fight for the ASU money, rather than waiting until the budget reached the House floor to bring up the issue.
Sims said ASU President Everette J. Freeman did appear before the subcommittee to make a case for the project. She said the panel’s staff told her the president was who they wanted to hear from.
Sims said she and Rep. Winfred Dukes, D-Albany, will continue to push for the ASU project as the budget heads to the Senate.