President William Greiner, Senior Vice President Robert Wagner and Provost Thomas Headrick spoke with members of the FSEC, shortly after Senior Associate Vice President for University Services Voldemar Innus addressed the PSS, at meetings Jan. 17.

Pataki's proposed budget slashes nearly $100 million in state tax support of SUNY and another $100 million from the Tuition Assistance Program, paves the way for another tuition increase and makes major changes in the state budgetary process itself. The proposal also calls for SUNY's fiscal year to begin on April 1, like the state's, and moves from an "appropriation" to a "cash" budget. All these changes, along with a detail-thin budget message, have UB administrators working overtime to interpret what it all actually means in dollars and cents.

Although Greiner, Wagner and Headrick all found positives in the budget, they told FSEC members to expect, on the whole, a very difficult year ahead. UB's share of the cuts to SUNY could be as much as $14 million or as little as $4 million, depending upon how many of the "Rethinking SUNY" proposals packaged with the budget are ultimately adopted. Innus told the PSS, "We are faced with a real challenge in '96-97 and beyond."

To keep budget cuts to a minimum, the state legislature must go along with politically controversial plans to "devolve" SUNY's medical centers in Brooklyn, Syracuse and Stony Brook; cut $8 million from the statutory colleges at Cornell University; increase tuition and encourage school districts in college towns to pay to send their talented seniors to courses at SUNY campuses. Failing to implement these proposals would mean, under a worst case scenario, that retrenchment would be all but impossible to avoid, according to Greiner.

"I'm going to be way out front pitching for devolving these hospitals because it works here," said Greiner, who added that the cuts to statutory colleges, which he advocated strongly last year, were also essential. Greiner also said preserving the TAP program must be a top priority. "Higher tuition at SUNY may be inevitable," he conceded, "so preserving TAP is a moral issue. It is one of the most wonderful policy innovations in our state."

While cutting TAP, the governor's proposal also opened the door to an across-the-board tuition increase, with a suggested cap of $250. The budget bills, however, will include enabling legislation for campus-based tuition. State Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, a Democrat who represents the South Campus and Buffalo State College, has predicted that an increase of close to $750 would be needed to meet the governor's projections.

Innus told PSS members that SUNY is now entering its second straight decade of declining state tax support. Administrators at UB and SUNY Central, Innus explained, concluded that there was little hope the legislature would restore tax dollars cut by the governor's proposal. Indeed, although more than one-third of the cuts originally proposed for SUNY in the 1995-96 executive budget were ultimately restored, SUNY Chancellor Thomas A. Bartlett made no mention of restoration this year, during his testimony before the legislature's fiscal committees at hearings in Albany on Jan. 16.

Previous state budgets have measured "appropriations," which is money that it was anticipated would be spent or committed during the fiscal year. The new budget operates on a cash basis, meaning simply that it measures the actual cash to be distributed during the fiscal year. And, fringe benefits, which had been budgeted separately, are now included in SUNY's budget. Overall, these changes, Wagner explained, are likely to be good for SUNY. They would enable campuses to manage their funds more efficiently and funds not spent during one fiscal year could be "carried over" to the next year, something campus financial officers have been clamoring for, according to Wagner. Under the old system, the rule of thumb was "spend it or lose it." However, Wagner opposed changing SUNY's fiscal year to April 1 due to the disruption a late state budget would then cause to the spring semester.

The governor's proposal also cuts SUNY's Capital Equipment Budget by more than three-quarters, from $21 million down to $5 million. This, according to Wagner and Greiner, would have a disproportionately harsh impact on UB, since much of what would be lost is related to the Graduate Research Initiative and equipment for undergraduate instruction.

At its Dec. 5 meeting, members of the FSEC learned that a six-month-old policy on academic "good standing" generated by last year's Faculty Senate put roughly one-quarter of UB's student body on bad footing, and voted to send the policy back to committee.

Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Nicolas Goodman told FSEC members that the policy, passed last spring, has been in force since being promulgated by President Greiner over the summer. However, the first round of potential repercussions will come this month, as fall grades become available.

Under the new policy, which Goodman called a codification of long-standing practice at UB, students who failed to achieve a 2.0 QPA in the fall, don't have an overall QPA of 2.0 or have more than 60 credits without a major, will receive letters from the Provost indicating they are "not in academic good standing." Students active in student government, fraternities or sororities, residence hall governance or athletics could see their extracurricular activities curtailed.

But athletic teams currently in midseason, including basketball teams, will not be affected by the new policy, according to Michael Gentile, director of compliance in the Athletics Department. NCAA rules continue to permit the university to certify that student-athletes are in good academic standing once a year, in the fall, so that student-athletes who play in sports that span two semesters, such as basketball, would not face losing their spot on the team midseason.