Regent’s Committee Hears Plans for Budget Cuts

Sept. 1 was the first day the state of New Mex­ico began with­hold­ing 3.2445 per­cent of the monthly allo­ca­tions of state fund­ing going to the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico.  This lat­est cut in a series going back to 2008 was the topic of much con­ver­sa­tion at the lat­est meet­ing of the Board of Regents Finance and Facil­i­ties Com­mit­tee, as mem­bers heard how UNM will deal with the cur­rent cut and pre­pare for threat­ened cuts in 2011-12.

The full board is expected to vote on bud­get strate­gies at its next reg­u­lar meet­ing on Sept. 14.

Encour­ag­ing all uni­ver­sity units to take this cut across the board now, Regent Jamie Koch noted that no one knows what kind of dif­fi­cult deci­sions the leg­is­la­ture may have to make next year.

“If we don’t cut now, we face worse down the line,” said Koch.  “We should do what we can now to hold down tuition increases next spring.”

The schools and col­leges, aca­d­e­mic affairs units and admin­is­tra­tive sup­port units are final­iz­ing plans to deal with the cur­rent cut.  In addi­tion, schools and col­leges are also engaged in plan­ning for antic­i­pated future cuts.  Regent Don Chalmers said, “It’s nice to know that you are work­ing on plans for future cuts.  Every­one will have to be involved in how deci­sions are being made as it is everyone’s problem.”

Fac­ulty Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Rich Wood shared data with the com­mit­tee that showed the impact of the cuts on sev­eral Arts and Sci­ences depart­ments.  “We want you to know what it is like in the depart­ments, what the real­ity is fac­ing fac­ulty,” he said.

ASUNM Pres­i­dent Laz Car­de­nas told regents he is glad they will encour­age units to take the full bud­get cuts now. “We know that tuition increases will be inevitable, but cuts first.”

Staff Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Merle Kennedy told regents that staff are send­ing the coun­cil ideas for cost con­tain­ment which are being for­warded to appro­pri­ate depart­ments and admin­is­tra­tors. “We want to know that staff is given fair con­sid­er­a­tion and we feel that’s being done,” said Kennedy. “We are very involved.”

Regent Chalmers applauded the gath­er­ing of ideas from around cam­pus. “The admin­is­tra­tion does not have a monop­oly on good ideas,” he said.

His­tory of State Fund­ing Cuts at UNM Main Campus

In the 2008–2009 bud­get, the state appro­pri­a­tion for UNM’s main cam­pus was $211,838,500.

From the end of 2008 until the begin­ning of this fis­cal year in July 2010, main cam­pus state appro­pri­a­tions were reduced four times for a total of 12.22 per­cent or $25,892,500.

The cur­rent 3.2445 per­cent reduc­tion takes another $6,033,000 from main cam­pus cof­fers and leaves the main cam­pus with an adjusted state appro­pri­a­tion of $179,913,000 for the 2010-11 fis­cal year.

These num­bers do not reflect the cuts affect­ing the UNM Health Sci­ences Cen­ter or the UNM branch campuses.

With the goal of pro­tect­ing the class­room to the great­est extent pos­si­ble, UNM’s admin­is­tra­tive sup­port func­tions — areas like finance, human resources and safety that sup­port the aca­d­e­mic mis­sion of the uni­ver­sity – have absorbed 33.6 per­cent of the cuts that occurred before the most recent 3.2445 per­cent reduction.

The aca­d­e­mic side of the house absorbed 23.7 per­cent of the cuts, though it is impor­tant to note that at the same time, fund­ing for instruc­tion actu­ally increased 2.2 per­cent.  The remain­der of the cuts were cov­ered by use of build­ing renewal and replace­ment funds, stim­u­lus money and unbud­geted tuition.

It is also impor­tant to note that $13.041 mil­lion in non-recurring funds was used to shore up the cur­rent bud­get – funds that will not be avail­able for next year’s budget.

Aca­d­e­mics is being asked to take its pro­por­tional share of the cur­rent 3.2445 per­cent reduc­tion, $4,410,003 or 77.45 per­cent. Admin­is­tra­tive sup­port will absorb 22.55 per­cent or $1,283,997.  In a meet­ing with Pres­i­dent Schmidly shortly after the state announced the 3.2445 per­cent cut in early August, uni­ver­sity deans deter­mined that they wanted max­i­mum flex­i­bil­ity in han­dling the reduc­tion at the school and col­lege level.

It is widely antic­i­pated that fur­ther cuts are in the off­ing, as state rev­enues fail to rebound, and no one is pre­dict­ing how deep the next round of cuts may go.  An addi­tional 5 per­cent cut to the university’s already dimin­ished base would take another $8.5 mil­lion from main cam­pus cof­fers and deepen the over­all cuts in state fund­ing to nearly 20 percent.

Media con­tact: Susan McK­in­sey (505) 277‑1807; e-mail: mckinsey@unm.edu