Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad signed a bill Wednesday morning that will reduce Iowa State funding for the current fiscal year by $8 million. 

For all three Iowa regent universities, higher education will be seeing an $18 million loss – $8 million from the University of Iowa and $2 million from the University of Northern Iowa.

The budget cuts are part of a larger-scale state funding reduction, with Branstad’s original proposal to Iowa higher education reaching a staggering $34 million.

Iowa State President Steven Leath commented on the funding reductions in an interview with the Iowa State Daily, saying that he hopes with the new leadership in both the Senate and the governor’s offices that the cuts are a temporary situation.

“We’ve been fortunate for five years […] this is the first time we’ve had to deal with cuts,” Leath said. “We hope they are a temporary situation, and by next year, we’ll be back seeing increases to help scale this university with all the growth we’ve seen.”

In an initial statement regarding the budget cuts, Iowa Board of Regents President Bruce Rastetter said the regents understand the constraints that Iowa faces and hopes to “make the required reductions in a way that has the least effect on students.”

Leath backed this sentiment to a degree – after the reductions originally proposed were cut nearly in half.

“We’re relatively pleased that the cuts are smaller than the governor originally proposed,” Leath said. “In terms of dealing with long term, we’re still trying to deliver our message.

“We have new leadership in the Senate, [and] we’re about to have new leadership in the governor’s office for the first time I know of, or at least in recent history, [where] both of those leaders will be Iowa State alums that know us well and understand us well … hopefully [it will] be easier to communicate our needs and our message to them.”

Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds is slated to take Branstad’s place should he be appointed as the U.S. ambassador to China. Reynolds graduated from Iowa State in December 2016. 

Leath said in the short term, the university has to deal with the reductions, which he said will largely impact ongoing projects and renovations, along with leaving several Iowa State positions open temporarily or putting some to a complete halt.

“In the short term, we do have to deal with reductions, and whenever they come in the middle of the fiscal year, they are essentially twice as big as they seem,” Leath said. “We’re going to try to protect our academic core [and] protect the students.”

As for the future of state funding, Leath said that if reductions were to persist, “it’d be much more problematic.”

“We don’t want to sacrifice quality, and it takes resources to deliver quality,” Leath said on state funding but also tuition increases.