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More than three months after the governor ordered state agencies to cut their budgets by an additional 7 percent each, SUNY had not submitted any plans in response. UUP President Phillip Smith warned the price of inaction would be hefty.
“This delay has the potential of making the pain this budget cut will generate even worse, forcing even deeper cuts later on,” Smith said after the SUNY Board of Trustees met Sept. 16 but took no action to address the latest budget reduction that amounted to another $96 million.
While reiterating that SUNY should be spared from sharp budget reductions because of the economic return it provides to the state, Smith asked SUNY’s administrators to do the right thing by carefully considering where to cut expenditures to minimize the effects on its academic programs and student services.
“SUNY must act immediately to protect its core mission to provide a quality education for the greatest number of New Yorkers,” Smith said.
Smith added that SUNY would be wise to follow the example of the City University of New York (CUNY), which rapidly assembled a constructive plan that fully protects academic quality and student services, while maintaining and possibly increasing full-time faculty. SUNY, Smith suggested, has similar opportunities to protect its core mission by presenting a responsible plan that defends the interests of current and prospective students.
Shortly after Smith’s comments appeared in the media, the SUNY Board of Trustees Finance and Administration Committee scheduled a meeting to discuss the budget cuts. During the Sept. 29 session, committee Chair H. Carl McCall warned that SUNY campuses may need to absorb as much as $70 million in budget cuts.
Several campus presidents and business officers revealed how the spending reductions would affect them, which included plans to scale back on admissions, reduce the number of courses, freeze hiring and attrit staff. UUP warned beforehand that such impacts were inevitable.
The committee promised to digest what it heard and come up with recommendations to deal with the budget cuts, but not until its November meeting. Their recommendations would then need to be adopted by the full Board of Trustees.
The possibility of even deeper cuts emerged in early October, when Gov. David Paterson revealed the crisis on Wall Street caused an additional $1.2 billion state budget shortfall. He called a special emergency session of the state Legislature Nov. 18 to come up with more cuts to deal with the deficit.
— Donald Feldstein