Board of Regents and NIU officials expressed little surprise with the final results of last week’s state legislative session but indicated they will be back pushing for more general revenue funds in the spring.

igher education came away last week with the approval to spend tuition money as it comes in but received no additional GRF from the Senate or the House of Representatives.

Faculty members were left without raises for the spring semester when Senate Bill 1520 was not called for a vote in the House. Supplementary funds for Illinois State Scholarship Commission grants also were missing.

“This means we’re going to have to work harder to communicate the needs of higher education,” NIU President John LaTourette said Friday. “We also have to work harder to try to get faculty salary increases.”

Ken Beasley, assistant to the president, said, “I wasn’t surprised. Senate Bill 1520, once the House began to add amendments, became a Christmas tree. You’re never sure. We were informed beforehand that chances of more general revenue funding for higher education was slim, but we continued to work for it.”

Student Association President Jim Fischer also said he was not surprised at the events, but he said he did notice a change in legislators’ attitudes toward a tax increase. He said the SA will continue to make students aware of the situation.

Beasley said NIU has had discussions with the Regents’ staff about what the university will do in the spring when the legislature begins work on appropriations for fiscal year 1989. Among some of the plans being implemented are pushes for an appropriations bill that would include as much money for higher education as possible, he said.

NIU also will work for a tax increase if the governor states that it is necessary for education funding to be increased, he said. Beasley said it is difficult to predict whether the legislature will approve the increase.

egents Chancellor Roderick Groves said, “Obviously, we will make the case for additional money for higher education. We have marked time this year. We have lost a lot of ground, and we will be making a strong case (in the spring) of what is necessary. The specifics have not been well-developed.”

Sen. Patrick Welch, D-Peru, said higher education might not have been given additional GRF last week because of their lack of lobbying. Rep. John Countryman, R-DeKalb, agreed with Welch’s assessment.

“I agree in the sense that we did not turn out the troops to improve the funding for higher education,” Groves said. “On the other hand, we did a lot of behind-the-scenes work to get the tuition money back. I think we made that very clear to all the legislators.

“We did make it very clear that we wanted the tuition money,” he said. “I think there was a clear point on the part of higher education not to put a full head of steam into the other issues. If you lobby people too heavily, they become resistent.”

ichard Wagner, Illinois Board of Higher Education executive director, was unavailable for comment Tuesday.