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House Bill 1000 |
House Author: Branch et al. |
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Effective: 6-17-11 |
Senate Sponsor: Zaffirini et al. |
House Bill 1000 amends the Education Code to revise the criteria under which a general academic teaching institution is eligible to receive a distribution of money from the national research university fund. The bill requires the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board by rule to prescribe standard methods of accounting and standard methods of reporting information for the purpose of determining the amount of restricted research funds expended by an eligible institution in a state fiscal year, in addition to determining the eligibility of such institutions to receive distributions from the national research university fund. The bill specifies that the verified information relating to eligibility criteria certified to the legislature by the coordinating board is used to determine which institutions are eligible for fund distributions, rather than to determine which institutions are initially eligible, and adds the comptroller of public accounts as a recipient of the certified criteria.
The bill authorizes the coordinating board to request certain audits by the state auditor with regard to the fund and requires the comptroller to reimburse the state auditor for the expenses of any such audits from money appropriated from the fund.
Previous law required the comptroller, in each state fiscal year, to distribute to eligible institutions the total amount appropriated from the fund for that fiscal year. The amount was allocated based on an equitable formula adopted by the legislature to carry out the constitutional purposes of the fund. The bill caps the total amount appropriated from the fund for any state fiscal year at an amount equal to 4.5 percent of the average net market value of the investment assets of the fund for the 12 consecutive state fiscal quarters ending with the last quarter of the preceding state fiscal year, as determined by the comptroller. The bill also provides for the distribution of the appropriated amount to each eligible institution and makes an initial appropriation to the comptroller from the fund for that purpose.