Legislator: ‘We’re killing the Millennium Scholarship fund’

By: Jay Balagna

Thursday, February 25, 2010 - 8:06 PM

Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-Clark County, talks with Sen. Bernice Matthews, D-Washoe County, before voting on an account-sweeping bill. Photo by Jay Balagna/Nevada Sagebrush.

CARSON CITY – The future of the Millennium Scholarship was shortened to 2015 today after legislators in both houses passed a bill that sweeps $197.4 million from state accounts to fill a hole in Nevada’s general fund.

Under the bill, A.B. 3, $5 million will be taken out of the account, which makes up almost half of the accounts remaining balance. About $7 million of what would be incoming money will be diverted to a different account. The cuts shorten the program’s life to 2013, but in closed-door sessions before the bill appeared, legislators moved $2 million annually from another account to extend the program to 2015.

The Legislature can put more money toward the Millennium Scholarship at its regular session in 2011.

“We’re killing the Millennium Scholarship fund, taking it down to expire in 2013 or 2015,” Sen. Bob Coffin, D-Clark County, said.

Coffin, who spoke out against the original version of the cut to the Millennium Scholarship fund yesterday, was one of only three senators to vote against the measure in the Senate. Only one assemblyman voted against it.

Sen. Steven Horsford, D-Clark County, said the Legislature would fight to make sure a college education was accessible for all Nevada students, but shied away from saying it would be saved in the 2011 legislature.

“What we did was extend the life of the program,” he said after the senate voted on the bill. “It will be the goal of Senate Democrats to be back in 2011 with a plan…the Millennium Scholarship is a program that is important to a lot of people, and we want to do everything we can to save it.”

The account sweep bill also included a more than $1.4 million cut to a special capital construction fund for the Nevada System of Higher Education.

With the passage of the bill, the legislature closed less than a quarter of the nearly $900 million budget gap.

Later in the afternoon, Republican legislators released their plan to close the remainder of the gap. The plan brought anger from Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, because it used numbers from Democrats she said were not ready to be released to the public.

Two education measures focused on funding flexibility and accountability will be discussed in the Asssembly tomorrow, Buckley said.

Jay Balagna can be reached at jbalagna@nevadasagebrush.com.