By Marshall Griffin, St. Louis Public Radio
Jefferson City, Mo. – Governor Jay Nixon has again cut the state budget for the current fiscal year, which began in July of 2009.
Budget Director Linda Luebbering says about $45.5 million has been withheld because revenues for April are coming in lower than originally projected.
"We had hoped that we would not need an additional round of expenditure restrictions, obviously, when we did it last time, but the April news has just been bad enough that we needed to go ahead and make yet another round of cuts," Luebbering said.
The biggest cut was to school busing for K-12 students, which took an $8 million hit. Other cuts include more than $3 million to biodiesel subsidies and nearly $5 million to the Parents as Teachers program.
In all, Governor Nixon has sliced more than $900 million from the current budget, and Luebbering says there's a chance more cuts could be made before the fiscal year ends on June 30th.