With Illinois’ continuing budget woes, the university continues to use tuition money to pay its bills and continues to work with the Illinois Comptroller’s offices to get the state funds as soon as possible.

Every year, the state of Illinois appropriates funds for each of its public universities. This year Eastern was appropriated $43 million, but has only received about $9.5 million of that number to date. This does not include the Monetary Award Program grant money, with the state is struggling to pay for this as well.

Treasurer Paul McCann said along with struggling to pay the appropriated funds, the state has also not reimbursed the university for this academic year’s MAP grants.

“We’ve already put it on the students bills, but we haven’t charged the state for the spring 2011 MAP grants yet, because of paperwork,” McCann said. “Once we do the state will owe us roughly an additional $10 million.”

McCann said by the end of the month the university will have spent nearly all of the $43 million appropriated.

“We have some ability to carry the state or ‘float alone,’ but we will need money from the state to make it to the end of the year,” McCann said.

With this money running low, McCann said his office keeps in close contact with the Comptrollers Office, keeping them informed of the current situation. He said they are very willing to work with the university and often come through in a “just in time manner.”

The state has currently paid $9.5 million, however McCann said the payments often come in small amounts.

“They have paid our submissions through about mid-September, the largest amount we received at one time was $3 million,” McCann said.

In order to try and save money during these difficult times, McCann said the university has cut the supply budget by 25 percent and is currently in a partial hiring freeze that does not include student workers. He said extra care is taken in determining the necessity of hiring on the non-student level.

“We have given students preference in hiring and financial aid, we know how important that money is to them, there has been no attempt to decrease the student payroll,” McCann said.

In the past few years, the situation has never been this dire, McCann said. He added that the state has never gotten this far behind. Many would guess that the new income tax increase may help with these issues, but McCann said it is too soon to tell.

“The theory is that it should help cash flow, they predict they will receive about $6 billon (the state is currently more than 13 billon dollar in debt) but then the assembly will vote on how to use that money,” McCann said.

Amy Wywialowski can be reached at 581-7942 or [email protected]..