Granholm to spare MSU programs if they focus on staying green

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Although Gov. Jennifer Granholm agreed to spare funding for the MSU Extension and the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station, or MAES, Wednesday, university officials still are unsure of the programs’ futures.

“We have to await the final signature on the budget bill,” President Lou Anna K. Simon said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty in the state budget.”

MAES conducts research across the state on issues such as food safety and biofuels. MSU Extension applies the research for business use, job creation and youth development programs such as 4-H.

The programs were funded at $64 million for the next fiscal year but after the state did not issue their monthly payment Oct. 16, university officials were concerned they could be completely eliminated, MSU Extension director Tom Coon said.

While balancing the state’s $40 billion budget, lawmakers already had made a 44 percent cut to the programs’ budgets, which heavily rely on state funding.

The programs fund 82 extension offices and 15 research stations statewide, employing about 3,000 workers. They also provide 74 percent of the funding for the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, said Jeffrey Armstrong, the college’s dean. Without funding for the Extension and MAES, the college also would have been in danger of elimination, Armstrong said.

Armstrong said although it’s a relief that funding won’t be completely vetoed, he still has long-term concerns about the possibility of additional future cuts and job losses.

Armstrong said the decrease in funding still could mean hundreds of job losses by January 2010 as officials decide how to absorb the cuts.

Granholm agreed not to veto the programs’ funding if they took steps to focus on green initiatives.

“What happened this week was, as we had conversation with the Legislature and the governor, we mentioned that we were going through (a) restructure,” Coon said. “They really picked up on the green economy stuff.”

Megan Brown, a spokeswoman for the governor, said the funding will remain intact when the governor signs the higher education budget.

“As Michigan moves from rust to green, these programs will be focused on enhancing our local communities’ efforts to collaborate and innovate in the new clean energy economy,” Granholm said in a statement. “I support continued funding for this restructuring, with its emphasis on growing Michigan’s new green economy.”

With the announcement that funding won’t be eliminated, MSU’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources — a main point of pride for the university — avoids the possibility of being shut down.

MSU’s agricultural program sets it apart from other universities, animal science senior Joel Arends said.

“(The programs) extend knowledge and education and the learning experience from the instructors at MSU, and (they) extend that to the producers, the farmers who are out in the field growing the crops and feeding the animals that, in turn, feed the world,” Arends said.

Coon said MSU Extension has been restructuring for the past six months to move in an even “greener” direction. Future programs will focus more on issues such as energy efficiency, renewable energy development and urban farming, Coon said.

“We need to get better,” he said. “Also we need to find new ways to be efficient with our resources because we still may lose some of them.”

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