The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee had been scheduled to set the public school budget tomorrow morning, but now that’s been delayed to next week because of the Senate Education Committee’s passage yesterday of the revised iSTARS teacher pay legislation. “We don’t want to be out in front of the public policy decision,” said Senate Finance Chairman Dean Cameron, R-Rupert. “So we’ll put it off until after action on the Senate floor.”

The problem: The budget-setting so far has left room to spend about $24 million on increased school salaries next year, enough to give teachers 3 percent raises plus raise the minimum teacher salary by $500 a year. State Superintendent of Schools Tom Luna wants to instead give teachers just 1 percent, plus the $20.55 million iSTARS incentive bonus program for some of them, plus the $500 increase in the minimum, plus 3 percent for classified employees while holding administrators to just 1 percent, for a total of $33 million. “As we understand it, it would put us outside the target by about $9 million,” Cameron said. “Frankly, I’m not tickled about it. We’ve got to figure out how we’ll react.”

Public schools budget-setting likely will be pushed back to Tuesday, Cameron said. Also, some issues have come up between lawmakers, corrections and the governor’s office over the budget numbers for the prison warehouse conversion into inmate treatment beds, so that, too has been put off. It had been scheduled to be up first this morning. “We need some more time to negotiate with the governor’s office on it,” Cameron said. “We’ll postpone that.”

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