The Florida Legislature voted late Tuesday night to cut spending on the state's universities by $40-million, or 2.7 percent, while capping the state's contribution to the salaries of their presidents and letting the institutions increase tuitions substantially.

The austerity measures were part of a $53.5-billion state budget and a separate university-governance bill passed by both the State Senate and House of Representatives in the closing hours of a 16-day special legislative session.

Public-university lobbyists greeted the bills' passage with a mixture of relief and resignation. "It's all relative, of course, but in a budget year that is not very good, the university system ended up doing OK," said Kathleen M. Daly, director of governmental relations at Florida State University and the head of an informal association of lobbyists for the state's public universities.

The $40-million reduction in state appropriations for public universities will put the institutions under pressure to trim spending, and it could force them to freeze their enrollments, which have been growing rapidly, if their state support does not increase down the road. But the hit taken by the institutions was significantly milder than the $111-million cut in appropriations that Gov. Jeb Bush, a Republican, had proposed in January, or the $118-million cut that the House's Republican leadership had advocated going into the special session.

The leadership of the Senate, which also is dominated by Republicans, had called for tax increases that would have removed any need to reduce university spending. The state budget containing the $40-million reduction was passed along partisan lines, with few Democrats voting for it, few Republicans against.

To offset the reduction in state support for public universities, the budget contains language directing the institutions to increase tuition for in-state undergraduate students by 8.5 percent, and giving them the option of raising tuition rates for out-of-state and graduate students by 6.5 percent beyond that.

The question of how much to raise university tuition had been a volatile one. House leaders had proposed letting universities increase undergraduate charges by up to 12.5 percent. But Stanley G. Tate, the chairman of the board that oversees the state's prepaid-tuition plan, issued numerous public warnings that such increases would put the plan in finanical jeopardy, triggering a deluge of letters to lawmakers from worried parents.

The increase that lawmakers eventually adopted was much closer to the 7.5-percent one advocated by leaders of the Senate. The state budget called for tuitions at community colleges to increase by 7.5 percent. That increase was not as controversial.

Notably, the state budget did not contain any money for an office or staff for the new Board of Governors for the state universities that was established under an amendment to Florida's Constitution that voters adopted in November. But a separate university-governance bill overwhelmingly adopted Tuesday night took some initial steps to carry out the constitutional amendment, by setting out the length of the board members' terms.

The university-governance measure also contained provisions capping at $225,000 annually the amount of state money that can be paid to university presidents. Eight of the state's university presidents currently make more than that, and the rapid growth in their salaries in recent years had triggered a backlash among lawmakers. Universities will still be allowed to pay their presidents annual salaries of more than $225,000, but any reimbursement beyond the state cap will need to be raised from private sources.

Also contained in the university-governance bill was a provision allowing state universities to charge all applicants for admission, regardless of whether they are accepted, a $200 nonrefundable deposit. The universities had sought the authority to charge the fee because of the large volume of applications they receive.