Education projects could lose funding

Friday, Feb. 1, 2002 | 9:39 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Nevada lawmakers are preparing for budget battles over Nevada programs that could be cut from federal funding rolls according to President Bush's proposed budget, due next week.

The budget is a framework for Congress. Lawmakers make federal funding decisions during the year-long budget process, but ultimately Bush must sign them into law.

Among the programs that may be on Bush's chopping block are programs and projects that Congress and Bush approved just last year as part of the Labor and Health and Human Services spending bill. The programs have not yet received the money, and Bush apparently wants to "redirect" it to other priorities, congressional members said. A few of the programs include:

$1.75 million for the city of Las Vegas to use in existing training programs to help laid-off workers

$1 million to further develop the cancer institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas

$900,000 for a Clark County School District reading program called Project STARS

$250,000 to update equipment in the neonatal unit at University Medical Center

The Bush administration also has proposed sacrificing hundreds of education programs in part to help pay off a deficit in the popular 30-year-old Pell Grant program, which benefits roughly 4.4 million college students, Education Secretary Rod Paige said this week.

Among the programs is a $440,000 after-school project in Clark County designed to reduce the drop-out rate, a project promoted by Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. Berkley vows to preserve the money, spokesman Michael O'Donovan said.

Among other proposed cuts in Bush's budget:

$1.7 million for a UNLV program that improves access to health care for rural Nevada residents

$160,000 for a Clark County school-to-work program

$420,0000 for laptop computers in an elementary-junior high school in Hawthorne, Nev.

$150,000 for a work force learning summit sponsored by the Reno/Sparks Chamber of Commerce