The Iowa Board of Regents approved their 2020 fiscal year funding request which asks the state legislature to increase funding to regent universities by more than $20 million.

Two other major funding requests passed including funding for library modernization and deferred maintenance and the $75 million Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (VDL) were approved by the Board of Regents.

The $7 million funding increase is part of the $628.4 million funding request for the 2020 fiscal year between the three regent universities.

Between the universities, the overall increase would be approximately $20 million, which the board requests from the state legislature each year. If approved by the legislature, it would represent a 3.3 percent increase over previous years. The last two funding requests, which were smaller increases than this, were denied.

Iowa State’s request for permission to build the new VDL was approved by the board. The $75 million project, funded by state appropriations, private givings and university funds, will update and modernize Iowa State’s current VDL. The VDL at Iowa State is the only one of its kind in the state and hasn’t been updated for more than 42 years.

The plans for the VDL originally set the cost estimation for the project at $125 million, $100 million of which was supposed to come from state appropriations. When the legislature instead opted to provide $63.5 million, Interim Senior Vice President of the Division of Finance Pam Cain said the university had no choice but to lower the plans goals.

The plan for the VDL would have consisted of a building with more than 150,000 square feet of space, but the new plan puts that number at 83,000 to 88,000 square feet.

As part of the FY2020 request, the board asked for additional funds to aid the operations of the VDL to keep up with Iowa State’s VDL caseload doubling in size since 2010. This request would increase funding to the VDL by $410,000 per year.

The legislature currently supplies funding to the VDL at $4.1 million, but the VDL still funds 75 to 80 percent of its budget through fees for its services. The request claims this is “among the highest in the United States.”

Another part of the request would provide a recurring $4 million in state appropriations to the Iowa Economic Development Authority (IEDA) to fund four different Iowa Bioscience platforms with the hope of strengthening research at Iowa State and other regent universities.

Those four areas include bio-based chemicals, precision and digital agriculture, vaccines and immunotherapy and medical devices.

The funds would also help develop the Iowa Biosciences Development Center to coordinate necessary activities related to biosciences research.

“Biosciences are critical to Iowa’s economy and are vital to the state’s future economic development and growth, in the TEConomy report released by the Governor, four bioscience platforms were identified where Iowa has the greatest likelihood of achieving a differentiated leadership position to grow and diversify the state’s economy,” according to Regent documents regarding the FY2020.

Those four areas include bio-based chemicals, precision and digital agriculture, vaccines and immunotherapy and medical devices.

The last major funding request approval included $54.3 million for FY 2020 split between the University of Iowa and Iowa State. This request would be used for deferred maintenance and library modernization, two growing concerns mentioned frequently at the Regents meeting.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Paul Fuligni, associate vice president of Facilities Planning and Management, said deferred maintenance at Iowa State has continued to grow over the years even after adjusting for inflation. Fuligni said this maintenance has increased due to a budget cuts to the university from the state legislature.