Granholm works to bring Promise back to students

Gov. Jennifer Granholm announced Thursday during a conference call she will visit MSU next Wednesday as part of her efforts to bring back the Michigan Promise Scholarship.

The scholarship, which provided about 96,000 students with college scholarships between $1,000 and $4,000 statewide, was slashed along with 61 percent of additional financial aid funding to eliminate Michigan’s $2.8 billion deficit for the 2009-10 fiscal year budget. About 8,200 students at MSU relied on the scholarship.

ASMSU, MSU’s undergraduate student government, is hosting an event the same day to raise awareness about the effects of higher education budget cuts and ASMSU spokesperson Portia McKenzie said the event will occur at 10 a.m. on the steps of the Administration Building. Megan Brown, a spokeswoman for Granholm, said the time of Granholm’s Wednesday appearance at MSU is subject to change because of the governor’s schedule.

ASMSU’s event is an opportunity for students to voice their concerns about the cuts to higher education funding in both the state and university budgets, McKenzie said.

“Basically, everyone’s ultimate goal is to increase funding or decrease costs,” she said. “Directly from this we’re hoping to open up this dialogue and let them know that cutting higher education funding is detrimental from the state and letting them know that from our own voice.”

Granholm also said during the conference call students need to pressure state lawmakers to pass revenue to support the Michigan Promise Scholarship.

“We need students to know this fight is on,” Granholm said. “These legislators are persuadable, but they won’t be persuaded if students are quiet.”

A freeze on the earned income tax exemption was passed in the House to raise revenues tied to business taxes, Granholm said. This revenue could be redirected to fund the Michigan Promise Scholarship, she said.

The earned income tax freeze would create as much as $160 million in new revenue and the Michigan Promise Scholarship costs about $100 million, Granholm said.

The Senate has approved a package of bills that raises $100 million to offset the $292 per pupil cuts to K-12 schools for the 2009-10 fiscal year, said Matt Marsden, a spokesman for Sen. Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester. Marsden said there will not be any more efforts to offset this fiscal year’s budget cuts, which include cuts to the Michigan Promise Scholarship.

“As far as we are concerned, this budget year the books are closed,” Marsden said.

But some lawmakers still are optimistic that the Senate might be persuaded.

“It is still my hope that the Senate would work with the House to restore funding to those areas that are such vital needs to the state of Michigan,” said state Rep. Joan Bauer, D-Lansing.

Granholm said she is “enlisting” Michigan college students to contact legislators and take part in something that will benefit Michigan’s struggling economy.

“We have to make this commitment to the future of our state for the purpose of reshaping our economy,” Granholm said. “If you are not going to help pay for kids to go to college, if we can’t do that we will not be successful in transforming the economy.”