Updated, 6:31pm: I’ve just been told the $6 million allocated to WEIC will be in a separate budget bill pending the results of the Senate vote next week. Not sure how all that works, but okay…
Senate Bill 285 was introduced yesterday on the Senate floor in Delaware. This is the Delaware State Budget for Fiscal Year 2017 as of 6/23/16 after the Joint Finance Committee made cuts a couple weeks ago. Let me stress this, and I looked everywhere. The budgeted $6 million for WEIC is not in Senate Bill 285. The bill was left on the table. Which means they will pick it up again next week and make many changes I’m sure. The epilogue language has been written into the bill. Anything underlined is new epilogue language. That is where a lot of changes take place, and for education that is where we see things like the charter school transportation “slush” fund. I am also including the Governor’s proposed budget, Senate Bill 175, to compare what Governor Markell put in there and what has changed since.
I went through the entire thing with a fine-tooth comb. I wrote about the changes between the proposed budget and the current one below. This is strictly for education. But if you want to look in all departments the documents will have those. Of note is the fact DEFAC found another $7.5 million earlier this week. The state refinanced some bonds at lower costs based on interest rates. But it was announced on Wednesday at the Joint Finance Committee those funds would not be going toward WEIC. So where did the $6,000,000 allocated for WEIC in the Governor’s budget disappear to? I just read the entire budget bill, word by word over the past two hours. There is nothing with WEIC in there at all.
I did see that instead of being a line item, the $500,000 allocated to Autism legislation will come from the Tobacco Fund. The charter school transportation “slush” fund is still in Section 342 (paging John Kowalko).
SEED Scholarship went down from $6,156,600 to $5,656,600 –$500,000
Student Assessment system went down from $6,051,100 to $5,916,500 –$134,600
Energy Costs for the DOE went down from $75,000 to $72,100 –$2,900
Charter School Performance fund taken out for $500,000
Technology Block grant went down from $3,500,000 to $2,500,000 -$1,000,000
Educational Sustainment Fund went down from $4,000,000 to $1,000,000 -$3,000,000
Statewide Afterschool Initiative Learning Program taken out for $1,000,000
Career Pathways taken out for $250,ooo
**Wilmington Education Improvement Commission taken out for $6,000,000**
Teacher Compensation Reform taken out for $1,000,000
Academic Excellence Block grant went down from $39,560,700 to $38,753,800 -806,900
Early Childhood Initiatives went down from $18,255,900 to $16,255,900 -$2,000,000
Education Block grants went down from $55,156,300 to $54,394,400 –$761,900
Special Needs Programs went down from $47,006,300 to $45,006,300, -$2,000,000
Total decrease for Department of Education from Governor’s proposed budget to current budget: -$16,956,300
DELAWARE SENATE BILL 285: THE BUDGET BILL
GOVERNOR MARKELL’S PROPOSED BUDGET FOR FY 2017
The Season Of Myths 
I will once again be filing an amendment to the budget to remove the epilogue language that allows charter schools to keep transportation allocated money that exceeds transportation funds actually spent (by those charter schools) in violation of Delaware law. Each year that this epilogue language appears has resulted in more than one million dollars in taxpayer money unaccounted for and misspent. I hope your readers will call all of their legislators and demand that they support my amendment to remove this language that is a blatant misappropriation and misuse of taxpayer money.
Representative John Kowalko
LikeLiked by 1 person