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Scott
Reiterates Need to Plan for Less State Funding
A lengthy discussion of the budget dominated the Faculty senate meeting on Feb. 17 as Chancellor David Scott tried to clarify confusion about his call for precautionary budget cuts. He said the current effort in all major budgetary units, including those in Academic Affairs, to plan for possible budget reductions of 1, 2 and 3 percent for next year is "based on concerns about state funding for next year and not on what's happened in the last five years." At the Dec. 2 senate meeting, Sen. Stan Rosenberg (D-Amherst) and Rep. Ellen Story (D-Amherst) said that the state will likely see a tax cut on the ballot this year that could substantially affect the University's budget. Rosenberg warned that this, coupled with an almost certain recession in the near future, will leave the state with reduced revenues, and, as of that meeting, no plan for dealing with the reduction. Scott added that the President's Office is also planning for a smaller increase in next year's budget than the University has seen for a while. "The President's Office' guidelines for the campuses tell us to plan for an absolute upper ceiling of 4 percent [increase]." Scott's own predictions also have been around 3 percent. Scott said that because most of this year's 4.2 percent increase went to cover collective bargaining agreements, a 3 percent increase could leave little room to maneuver. "The biggest commitment in the budget is to salaries," he said. "Reasonable people can disagree about what approach should be taken [under these circumstances]," Scott said. "A possible approach to … projections that hover in the range of 3 percent is to take a risk and hope that the revenues will turn out better next year." But he believes that hoping for the best is less prudent than developing tentative plans. "What we need to do is to make a plan with our best estimates of revenues," he said. "We need to be cautious about next year until we agree on a strategy. I'm obviously going to try to protect the academic area." History professor Jack Tager, chair of the Program and Budget Council, asked whether Scott was referring to the same budget he had seen from the President's Office, requesting a 9 percent increase. Scott said the campus does want a 9 percent increase - and supports the system administration in its request - but that what the University asks for and what it gets are usually quite different.. "There is no disagreement between the President's Office and this campus," he said. Daniel Martin, professor of French and Italian, asked about what he had heard was an upcoming $200,000 cut to Spanish and Portuguese. John Cunningham, deputy provost, explained that the funding Martin was referring to was a one-time $286,000 allocation to cover extra sections of Spanish-language classes offered this year. He said this money has not been allocated for next year. Psychology professor Richard Bogartz told Scott he was hearing "a tone of distrust" from the faculty as they addressed the chancellor. "Maybe it's because your response is 'and then it gets to me and I decide,'" Bogartz said. He suggested that if faculty knew more about the process involved in Scott's decision-making, faculty might feel better. Joseph Larson, interim senate secretary and chair of the Rules Committee, explained that the academic budget process is one of a series of recommendations and requests starting at the departmental level, proceeding to the deans, then the provost, then the chancellor. Cunningham reiterated that the deans each propose budgets after meeting with their department chairs. They then discuss matters with each other and the Provost's Office until the provost has arrived at a recommendation for the chancellor. Because different deans communicate differently with their department heads, said Larson, faculty in some departments may get updates on what is being decided about their budget requests from their dean throughout the process, while others may get little budget information from their deans until after the process is finished. "What has happened after all of the departments in the college have sent their requests to the deans - that's the kind of thing that we don't see," he said. Senate president Ernie May, chair of Music and Dance, offered a different perspective. "This is part of a larger picture [of how the campus ought to spend academic monies]," he said. "What's going to happen is 30 to 50 percent of the faculty will retire in the foreseeable future, and this will liberate a very large amount of resources on the campus." Scott cautioned that this phenomenon may not release as much money as one might expect. "Where these retirements are about to occur are in areas where it would be very difficult not to replace them," he said. |
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