Michael Moline
House negotiators gave ground toward Senate President Joe Negron’s ambitious plan to bolster Florida’s state colleges and universities Friday.
They accepted a series of spending amounts for specific programs.
“Tuition assistance was real big in our offer,” House negotiator Larry Ahern said.
“We’ve moved to a lot of the Senate positions. We concur with a lot of the student assistance, to continue to lower the debt that students might acquire through the college and university experience.”
That means more than $715 million for various financial aid programs, including textbook assistance for Bright Future scholars — who qualified for aid based on academic achievement.
The House also accepted the Senate position on community colleges. CS/CS/SB 375, the proposed College Competitiveness Act, would revamp their governing structure and re-emphasize two-year programs.
“It’s something the Senate president thinks is important and the speaker concurs with,” Ahern said.
The Senate offered a raft of compromises on proviso language.
“Nothing overly substantive — just to start matching up with some of the funding line items,” Senate negotiator Bill Galvano said. “We didn’t get into the meat of, like, SB 374, those kind of things.”
