At a time when SUNY is reeling from a two-year $562 million budget cut, SUNY’s Board of Trustees voted to raise the salaries of three of its top executives, all of whom already earned more than $200,000.

The board’s action—coming after SUNY’s decision to close Nylink and furlough more than 200 staffers—raised the hackles of UUP President Phil Smith.

“Is it appropriate for these increases to be granted when SUNY officials have seen fit to furlough hundreds of lower-salaried System Administration employees and to lay off dozens of others? Of course not. This is unconscionable,” Smith testified at a hearing at the invitation of the Senate Higher Education Committee called to look into the controversial raises.

UUP does not normally comment publicly regarding the compensation of SUNY officials, but Smith said he felt compelled to speak out in the absence of advance disclosure of the raises and the bleak economic climate SUNY students and their parents face.

“Should SUNY be doling out such benefits while at the same time seeking unlimited differential tuition and other increased charges to students and families?” Smith asked, answering his own question with an emphatic, “Absolutely not.”

Smith also took the opportunity to question why SUNY is spending millions of dollars to refurbish executive offices at SUNY headquarters in Albany.

“We need to remind the chancellor and the Board of Trustees that this is not their University,” Smith told the panel. “This University belongs to its students and to the people of New York who expect the priority of the University to be the education of their children. New York state’s hard-working families deserve nothing less.”

Smith also noted that SUNY is sitting on more than one-half billion dollars in reserves as budget cuts have led to larger class sizes, course cancellations and the denial of admission to thousands of qualified applicants.

A week after Smith’s testimony, UAlbany became the latest campus to announce program reductions, with its campus president claiming they don’t have enough money to cover program costs

“We cannot understand why SUNY is not using its reserves to remedy these issues,” Smith said.

In her testimony before the committee, SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher defended the raises, but at the same time presented a compromise. The chancellor and Senior Vice Chancellor and Chief Operating Officer Monica Rimai said they would give up their annual housing allowances, and new housing allowances awarded to two of the three executives who received raises would be withdrawn.

But the $30,000 raises for the three SUNY officers remain intact.

The self-imposed compromise failed to silence the public outcry over the raises.

“The concessions hardly go far enough,” the Poughkeepsie Journal said in an editorial. “What’s more, they came about only after the excessive salary raises and perks were reported in the media.”

— Donald Feldstein