Rep. Dale Righter, R-Mattoon, has presented legislation that would call for a 3 percent cut into the state’s General Revenue Fund, which would spread the state’s appropriation callback among numerous state agencies.

“This would lessen the pressure for Eastern,” Righter said. “If we are able to spread the cuts over a larger area of the budget, the governor doesn’t have to take so much from other areas. This bill is good for Eastern because of that.”

Vice President of External Relations Jill Nilsen said the bill would likely help out Eastern’s current fiscal worries.

“If the bill would spread out those cuts, that would be positive,” she said. “Then there would be additional money in the FY02 (fiscal year 2002) budget for us to accomplish our academic mission.”

The state has said it plans to recall about $600,000 from Eastern’s current budget and force the university to pay for employee benefits, which add up to a $1.7 million bill.

Similar callbacks have been made to all of Illinois’ public universities.

State employee compensation and numerous state agencies, like the Illinois Board of Higher Education, would fall under Righter’s proposed cut.

Illinois FIRST and Illinois Road funds as well as funding for K-12 schools will not fall under the cut, Righter said.

“This bill asks everyone to cut a little instead of asking a few areas to cut a lot,” Righter said.

The governor, Righter said, is limited in the areas he can find the funds to cure the state’s $500 million deficit.

“The governor’s office adopted an overly optimistic budget,” Righter said as to why the state is currently running short on funds.

He also said the nations economic slowdown, accelerated by the attacks on Sept. 11, damaged the state’s current budget.

The proposed bill, Fiscal Year 2002 Emergency Budget Reduction Act, which was filed last week, is in the House Rules Committee, which is comprised of three Democrats and two Republicans. Righter said he has asked the committee’s chairman to release the bill to another sub-committee so it could get to the floor for a vote.

“I don’t know if they’ll do this, there’s a very strong possibility it could get buried,” Righter said.

He said if the bill gets out of committee “in the next two weeks” then there might be a chance for it to pass, but “the chances are getting reduced as time goes on.”

And if the proposed bill does get out of committee, Righter said its passage will depend on the majority of the house.

“If we don’t do this now, we’ll push this into the next fiscal year and that will be hard as it’s last years budget,” he said.

Last month Righter voted against a proposed bill that would have allowed Gov. George Ryan to cut into Medicaid reimbursement levels for hospitals and nursing homes.

“The Medicaid reimbursement value was too low,” Righter said, explaining his decision.

An example Righter used was if a hospital service cost $100, the state was already reimbursing only $80 of the bill, so to cut into that spending more would be harmful to those depending on Medicaid.