Colleagues,
Late yesterday (or, more accurately, early today….more or less) the Governor and Legislature reached agreement on a budget for the next fiscal year. Once again, for our members and university, it’s a mixed bag. We’ve achieved some successes, but also not gotten nearly enough of what we need. Adding all new money in the budget, close to $60 million has been added to the SUNY budget, not including capital funding.
First and foremost, the legislature refused to pass another round of SUNY 2020, instead freezing tuition for one year. As you know, we opposed another round of tuition increases without a strong commitment to Maintenance of Effort language and funding. There is no maintenance of effort language in the budget, something that we will take up the fight on again in next year’s budget — something the Governor referenced in his press conference.
Second, regarding spending, the budget contains $18 million in general funding which is NOT linked to a performance based funding mechanism. We were able to beat that back. However, the process for spending the funds will be determined by the trustees, opening the door to the use of such a mechanism. We will fight that possibility, and argue for its use to address long standing needs of the university such as adjunct salaries and additional full time faculty and staff. Also in the area of funding, the budget once again significantly increases funding for EOP and EOC, with $5.3 million going to the former and $5 million to the latter. Additionally, $2 million has been added for the ATTAIN labs. Finally, we have $10 million going to Green Energy Programs at the Tech Campuses — an idea which started with UUP late last year.
Third, we were able to convince the legislature to reinstate the $18 million that had been cut in the governor’s budget for the SUNY hospital subsidy. Also, we fought off another attempt to create a private equity intrusion into SUNY Downstate. Both of these victories, however, are just the first part of a battle that will continue for the foreseeable future to defend our hospitals. Storm clouds are gathering.
Fourth, we were also able to protect our retirees. Proposals to raise the costs for medicare recipients and to penalize those retiring with less than 30 years of state service were both defeated by the legislature. Once again, these dangerous proposals could not stand the pressure brought to bear by a strong coalition of groups.
Finally, there are other areas of the budget agreement that we are still studying to ascertain their impacts on us. A prime example is the family leave provisions. We will keep you posted on further elements of the budget agreement as they are examined.
I want to personally thank all of you who took part in our advocacy efforts going back to last December when we rolled out our proposals. The work we all did has paid off, though much remains to be done. We are finalizing schedules for in-district advocacy and we will keep you informed. We also have a packed post-budget agenda for advocacy, including the various proposals pertaining to teacher education and the health sciences centers.
Once again, let’s focus on organizing our members — getting them signed up and even more importantly, getting them actively engaged! The more of us there are, the more power we can exert.
In solidarity,
Fred