Gov. Pat Quinn signed a bill Tuesday afternoon that would allow SIUC and other state universities to borrow money to make payroll instead of receiving timely state payments.

SIU President Glenn Poshard said the signing of the bill was a great relief to him and other administrators, as the next several months are critical as the university prepares its budget for the next fiscal year.

“We will now be able to go out within the next 30 days into the open market and try to effect some borrowing, and that will definitely help us with our July and August payroll assessment.

“We feel pretty good about it; it’s going to get us over this problem over the next few months, which is a critical time period for us,” Poshard said.

The bill — Senate Bill 642 — would allow universities to borrow up to 75 percent of their payrolls that have not been covered by appropriation payments for fiscal year 2010.

According to figures from the Illinois comptroller’s office, state universities are still owed more than $630 million in late payments for the FY10 — which ends June 31. The state owes SIU around $106 million in payments.

The deadline for the state to make the payments is Aug. 31, but Quinn has requested the FY10 payment deadline be extended to the end of December.

Poshard said there will be an emergency meeting of the SIU Board of Trustees on Thursday to approve the borrowing authority. He said it would take around 30 days after the BOT meeting before the university would begin the borrowing process.

There will still be paperwork to go through after the BOT meeting, along with meetings with firms to help the university get on the market, Poshard said.

“The borrowing would be sent out to several entities that loan money, and we’ll take what we can get at the cheapest rate,” he said. “We’ll be looking at the lowest rates we can get, but we won’t know how that works until we get out there on the market and see.”

SIUC chancellor Rita Cheng said the bill would allow the university to continue at a high standard as it works to create a budget for fiscal year 2010.

“It will allow us to continue to operate at a high-quality standard and make sure we keep all of our programs intact while the state continues to look for ways to support the universities,” she said. “It allows us to manage until the state funding issue continues to be discussed in Springfield.”