KU, KU Med Center Reveal Preliminary Budget Cuts Required After Brownback Cut Funding This Summer

This is Governor Brownback’s legacy to the state of Kansas.

Long ago when I first arrived in Kansas I used to work for a person who was a self-designated “DINK” – Dual income, no kids. He was proud of the fact that he and his wife would enjoy life to the fullest by buying all the big boy toys, (he did,) and retire early (they did.) He didn’t just celebrate it, he reveled in it and rubbed people’s noses in it, sometimes sneering when he would hear of a new child to come for someone who worked with him. His usual comment was something like “well that’s a shame, there goes that hardbody…” This guy’s wife made a lot of money, and as a manager he made a respectable sum as well, but he kept his wife on a make up budget. If he wasn’t an outright libertarian then he was libertarian in nature.

The entire time I worked for him he had a pet peeve that you would hear about at least a couple of times per month. He would bitterly complain about having to pay for “other people’s kids to go to school.” It was an anathema to him, he would rant on and on about it while standing in a computer room surrounded by technology designed, created, and built by other people’s kids who attended public schools. He did it while driving in cars built by kids who attended public school, and he did it while driving down roads that they constructed. A few years later in life he had serious health issues and his life was saved by doctors who attended KU med. Even after that he never saw the hypocrisy of how he benefited from public schooling in Kansas while railing against it.

The University of Kansas has outlined the first half of about $3.8 million in cuts to academic and administrative programs expected this year at the Lawrence and Edwards campuses.

Among the programs taking significant cuts in this first-round announcement are the Kansas Geological Survey, Kansas Public Radio and the Audio Reader service for the blind and visually impaired.

Officials said the first $1.3 million in cuts announced by Provost Neeli Bendapudi on Wednesday are necessary as the university tries to manage a $7 million reduction in state funding mandated by Gov. Sam Brownback this summer.

An additional $3.7 million in state funding has been cut from the KU Medical Center budget, and officials there said the budget reduction would cause significant hardship for the medical school.

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