Florida university officials are unhappy about Gov. Charlie Crist’s veto on Thursday of a 5-percent tuition increase in the state budget. But they face an even greater concern that, by deleting the section of the budget that outlines per-credit tuition cost, the governor might have inadvertently prohibited public colleges from charging any tuition at all this fall, The Palm Beach Post reports.

Legislators and higher-education leaders also are questioning whether it was legal for Mr. Crist, a Republican, to reduce the amount of a budget item, rather than eliminate it outright. In his veto, the governor calculated what the 5-percent increase would equal and trimmed the amount, $19-million, from a $922-million line item for public universities. Lawmakers had thought that because the increase itself was not itemized, Mr. Crist would have had to veto the entire item, not simply the part he did not support.

Mark Rosenberg, chancellor of the state-university system, told the Post that it was too early to know whether the Board of Governors would challenge the veto. In 1999 the Senate president successfully sued the governor at the time, Jeb Bush, over a similar veto.

The governor’s veto does not bode well for separate legislation, approved this month by the Legislature, that would allow three of the state’s universities to charge their undergraduates up to 40 percent more. At $73.71 per credit, or $2,211 for a 30-credit year, Florida’s public universities have among the lowest tuition rates in the country. —Karin Fischer