Being a budget writer has its perks.

As a first-time Senate Appropriations co-chair, Sen. Kay Hagan got a few provisions in the 2003 budget to help out her home district and other pet projects.

Here's a quick look:

Millennium Campus: Hagan canceled the proposed sale of a former school for deaf children, then gave the land to N.C. A&T and UNC-Greensboro for a research campus (Section 6.20).

Tuition Promise: Hagan promoted a provision that gave free tuition to state universities to all graduates of the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics (Section 9.4).

Furniture Market: At Hagan's request, the budget included $900,000 for a free shuttle service for the twice-yearly High Point Furniture Market (Section 29.17).

Civil Rights Museum: Hagan sought $1 million for a long-planned International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro, but it was cut by the House.

Hagan also added a provision calling testing the backlog of rape kits a "priority" for the N.C. Department of Justice (Section 14.7) and funding five pilot programs to teach financial literacy to high school students (Section 7.35).

She also limited a Republican proposal to require reports on spending by nonprofits that receive state money to those with grants of more than $300,000 (Section 6.21).

Sen. Kay Hagan is seeking more than $48 million in state spending.

The Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate has sponsored one bill and co-sponsored 16 bills seeking appropriations in the upcoming state budget. As a longtime state senator, she is serving an advisory role on the budget in the short session.

Hagan is the primary sponsor of a bill that would give the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering run by UNC-Greensboro and N.C. A&T University $2.9 million in the budget.

Among the larger appropriations bills she is cosponsoring: $12 million for the N.C. Housing Trust Fund, $9.5 million to the UNC system for 4-H camps, and $8.1 million to buy a building for a student services center at N.C. A&T.

She is also asking for $3 million for Boys & Girls Club programs targeting dropouts and teen pregnancy, $3 million for an International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro, $2.6 million for promoting the semiannual furniture market in High Point, $2.5 million for minority financial literacy programs, $2 million for arts programs and $1 million for a parental school involvement pilot program.

Among the appropriations under $1 million: Money for a literacy program in Wake County public schools, an electronic health information study commission, Kids Voting programs, a John Coltrane Music Hall in Greensboro, job training for the homeless and former inmates, a male-oriented teen pregnancy prevention program, and housing for recovering substance abusers in Greensboro.