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Advisory group to respond to expected budget cuts
By JOHN DELLACONTRADA
Contributing Editor
UB will form a university-wide strategic financial management advisory group charged with developing a plan to respond to anticipated New York state budget cuts to SUNY.
UB also is implementing a 45-day hiring moratorium, effective Aug. 6, and a moratorium on purchase expenditures exceeding $5,000. Exceptions to the moratorium on purchases will be limited to transactions that are critical to health, safety, contractual commitments and essential sponsored program activities.
The measures were announced yesterday in a letter to all UB faculty and staff from Provost Satish Tripathi.
Gov. David Paterson and the SUNY administration have not yet determined how much UB and other SUNY campuses will be affected by state budget cuts, but Tripathi said UB must take steps to prepare for Paterson’s call for an additional 7 percent budget reduction for state agencies.
State funding makes up about 20 percent of UB’s $1 billion budget. UB has already implemented a 3 percent budget cut mandated by Paterson in the spring.
President John B. Simpson, in a letter to the campus, noted that UB is in a good position to respond to the budget challenges. For the past four years, the university’s strategic plan, UB 2020, has partly focused on transformation and improvement of UB operations and strategic use of resources.
“Optimizing the impact of our academic enterprise is at the crux of UB 2020,” Simpson said. “As but one example, we have made significant progress through UB 2020 in restructuring the delivery of crucial services across the entire university enterprise to ensure greater efficiency and effectiveness.
“This has garnered significant savings to date—savings that have been reinvested into the enhancement of our academic mission. Current circumstances will now make it imperative for us to pursue these opportunities with increased resolve.”
According to Tripathi, the financial management advisory group will be called on to give UB’s senior leadership counsel regarding “the best ways in which UB can deal with this distressing fiscal environment so that we, as a university, can emerge stronger.” The group will be comprised of UB faculty, professional staff, classified staff and students.
“The outcome of their deliberations will be used to inform senior leadership’s thinking about how we can best manage and navigate through this difficult period,” Tripathi said.
The hiring and purchasing “time-out,” Tripathi added, will preserve current degrees of financial freedom for UB as the university learns more about the specific actions called for by the governor and SUNY, and “determines the campus approach we should take in response to this financial context.”
Simpson said UB remains committed to the main goal of UB 2020—building a premier research university—but he called on the state to make serious changes in the way it funds and governs higher education. UB’s success is part of the solution for the economic future of New York. UB produces a 5-to-1 return on investment for every dollar of state support it receives, Simpson pointed out.
“The University at Buffalo can—and should—be an integral part of the solution to this crisis.” Simpson said. “UB 2020 provides not only a roadmap for UB’s future as a research university, but it also provides direction for enhancing UB’s role as a catalyst for the regional economy. Research universities like UB generate new human and intellectual capital, grow the new economy and ultimately make New York and the nation more competitive.”