Here at CalArts we were informed that if we did not meet our overall enrollment goal for the entire institute, staff would be furloughed. We somehow managed to achieve the numbers we needed--God Bless the parents of art students, bad economy and all! Then along came the recent election in which bond initiatives were rejected by the voters. Our Governator announced that spending cuts would have to be made, including the reduction of Cal Grants--state supplementary funding for college students. The cuts would affect new students only. Therefore, whereas we thought we had met (and even slightly exceeded) the threshold for the number of new students in the fall, when the "no new Cal Grants" bomb dropped, we found ourselves in a deficit situation. Oy! Alan Eder -----Original Message----- From: Rob Goodale <rrg at unlv.nevada.edu> To: caut at ptg.org Sent: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 11:47 am Subject: [CAUT] University Budets and Payroll Hello all, I'm wondering how other universities are dealing with budgets in the recession. In Nevada the state constitution forbids tax increases without voter approval. It also says that the state is not allowed to spend more then it has, thus preventing deficits. Gosh, what a novel idea! (are you listening California... Hello, McFly....) Few residence complain about this arrangement as you would expect and we have no state income tax, (golly what a bummer). All our tax =0 Arevenue is generated from the people who deposit their pay checks in our casinos. Well right now as you would guess gaming revenue is way down and there simply isn't enough to cover the expenses. A few years ago we had a massive surplus that was put into a 'rainy day" fund but that account is quickly running dry. As a result the state is now having to find ways to cut expenses, (what a novel concept), in order to patch up the problem. Needless to say this has the legislators that like to spend other peoples money very upset, (a single tear rolls down my cheek). So, having taken a machete to the budget one of the things they have decided to do is cut university payroll. On May 22, bill #SB-433 passed mandating that the university slash personnel expenses. The latest Memo states that all full-time classified staff must take "furlough" time, (that's the politically correct way of saying pay cut). In other words an unpaid day off, one every pay period. Since each pay period is 10 working days, (every two weeks), this translates into a 10% pay cut. Honestly I would rather accept the pay cut then allow law makers to open a Pandora's box that would lead to millions if not billions of dollars in new taxes and future deficits. Economic recessions come and go but once they find a new way to get to your wallet that box will never close. The state will be ruined and we will join California in the land of stupid. I'm going to look into a loop hole that might allow me to make up the difference. There are services I've been regularly performing that I should technically be getting paid for but haven't. If I can catch the dept. chair in a good mood I might be able to persuade him to pay me for those services which would easily cover the cut. I am wondering how are other universities handling things? Is anyone else out there getting a pay cut or being threatened about one? Are enrollments going down? What are things like in your neighborhood? Rob Goodale, RPT Las Vegas, NV -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20090609/c9ba13f0/attachment.htm>
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