Under a newly introduced package of bills in the Illinois Senate, public universities throughout the state would receive a sum of $507 million, including $93.4 million to SIU.

The bill, introduced Thursday by Senate President John Cullerton, would fund the money to SIU for it to meet its operations expenses for the fiscal year ending June 30. Community colleges would receive $230 million.

“This would give us some badly needed breathing room to make sure we get through the fiscal year, and could more importantly finally signal an unfreezing of this bizarre stalemate,” SIU President Randy Dunn wrote Wednesday in his bi-weekly newsletter.

The package would break the state’s historic yearlong budget impasse, which left legislative leaders without a state budget at the beginning of 2017. Two stopgap budgets were passed in April and June as temporary solutions to the crisis. 

The appropriations outlined in the legislation would represent only half of the school’s state money in a normal year, Dunn said. 

“It’s too early to get too optimistic, but the promise of this long-elusive grand bargain may strengthen over the coming week,” Dunn said.

Staff writer Olivia Spiers can be reached at [email protected], 618-536-3325 or on Twitter @_spierso.

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