Tennessee Departmental Budget Hearings Underway in East Tennessee

Today, Governor Haslam's departmental budget hearings continue in Knoxville with the Department of Education budget hearing.

Also, today will feature budget hearings for the departments of Agriculture, Tourism, Children's Services, and Veterans Affairs. The TennCare budget will be heard on November 28th. These hearings will wrap up this round of the Governor's budget hearings. Video of these hearings is available at http://www.tn.gov/. at the link for budget hearings. If you miss the live presentations, the video is archived for later viewing.

One highlight from the Department of Education budget hearing is that the proposed funding increase for the BEP for FY 2011-2012 is $53.8 million. Of that figure, approximately $20 million is for expected growth in student enrollment. The remaining increase is due to inflationary factors in the BEP formula itself.

Feds Restore Funding for Meth Clean-Up

This past February, federal funds to offset clean-up costs for meth labs dried up. This past week, a federal appropriations act restored $12.5 million in funding for this program. In 2010, the funding was over $19 million. While this new funding is not likely to be enough to meet all demands, it should assist. There was concern nationally as the loss of revenue to deal with the costs associated with the labs seemed to discourage enforcement. Seizures in Tennessee were down 32% over the prior year.

For more on this issue, see this article in the Tennessean here.