Gov. Rick Perry of Texas vetoed $650-million in state spending late last week, including $36-million for higher-education projects and $154-million for employee benefits at community colleges, according to news reports.

The money trimmed from community colleges amounted to half of their appropriation for group insurance, the Austin American-Statesman reported. The governor said state money could not be used for that purpose because local taxes and tuition supported the bulk of community-college operations, and the employees therefore were not state employees. He also accused the colleges of trying to obtain the money by falsifying their appropriations requests.

Reynaldo García, president of the Texas Association of Community Colleges, said his group had been “blindsided” by the accusation, which he called “an irresponsible statement” and strongly denied. Community colleges are required by law to provide insurance, he told the Austin newspaper, and will have to consider cutting staff members or raising tuition or local taxes to make up for the lost funds.

According to that article and others in the The Dallas Morning News and the Houston Chronicle, the higher-education items that were deleted included $2-million for diabetes research at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston; $2-million for obesity research at an agricultural-research facility affiliated with the Texas A&M University System; system-operations money for the Universities of Houston and of North Texas; and $500,000 for the Higher Education Coordinating Board to develop a system tracking student readiness and progress. The governor, a Republican, also deleted funds for a museum of fine arts at Angelo State University, a life-sciences institute at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and an engineering program at West Texas A&M University.

Over all, the governor’s vetoes amounted to less than half a percent of the $152.5-billion, two-year budget approved by the Legislature in May. —Charles Huckabee