Dear Colleagues:<\/p>\n
As I’m sure you know by now, we have a State budget for fiscal year 2017-2018. \u00a0Though we were not successful at reaching our ambitious goals in advocating for major investment in full-time faculty and staff and extensive support for our teaching hospitals, the budget that was finalized over the weekend presents us with some good news and a foundation upon which to build moving forward. \u00a0Of course as is always the case, good news is mixed with some cause for concern.<\/p>\n
First, the Governor’s Excelsior Scholarship program was passed. \u00a0We applaud the Governor for this emphasis on access to public higher education for New Yorkers. \u00a0It should also bring about improved student numbers at SUNY campuses where enrollment has suffered a bit. \u00a0The challenge of course is that funding to support these students will only arrive at the campuses after a student has successfully completed 30 credits in a given year. \u00a0But it is a step in making SUNY more affordable and accessible.<\/p>\n
Second, we were able to, at long last, convince the Governor and Legislature to pass maintenance of effort provisions in this year’s budget. This is a major victory. \u00a0However, it means that the only requirement going forward is that the Governor submit a budget in future years that includes no cuts to SUNY. \u00a0As such, it guarantees that SUNY will not be subject to the kind of cuts we have seen over the past seven years.<\/p>\n
Third, though we opposed tuition increase, the last several years this year the Governor, the Legislature and SUNY have all come to the conclusion that a second rational tuition plan is necessary. \u00a0The budget authorizes the Board of Trustees to raise tuition no more than $200 per year over the next four years. \u00a0For UUP, the most important component of this part of the budget is the requirement that the funds be used to hire full-time faculty and staff that are in our bargaining unit. \u00a0Further, the Chancellor must report publicly to the Governor and the Legislature every year as to how tuition dollars are being spent.<\/p>\n
Fourth, regarding the SUNY hospitals, though the budget re-instates $9 million in the state subsidy going to the hospitals, that only represents half of what was cut by the Governor. At the same time, we were able to secure language that will potentially protect DSH payments which the hospitals desperately need.<\/p>\n
Fifth, joining with our coalition partners in the labor movement, Governor’s Cuomo’s attacks on retiree health care benefits were defeated handily. \u00a0This victory shows the power of coalition advocacy.<\/p>\n
As we have stated to the press, the budget is a good start. Moving forward, in the post budget part of the session our focus will be on ensuring adequate and sustained DSH payments to the hospitals, and a strong effort to open SUNY Foundations to full transparency. \u00a0We will also be developing strategies that will ensure adequate funding to grow faculty and staff numbers to meet the demand created by the Excelsior program. \u00a0Similarly, we will plan ways to expand the maintenance of effort to include collectively bargained salary increases, fringe benefit costs at the hospitals, and debt servicing at the hospitals.<\/p>\n
We are continuing to study the budget to ensure that we have the fullest possible understanding of all its aspects and how they impact our members. \u00a0I will provide full information on the budget and our political advocacy work moving forward at the Spring Delegate Assembly just three weeks away.<\/p>\n
Please accept my deepest thanks for all the work so many of you have done to ensure that, in these very challenging times, we were able to do as well as we have in this budget.<\/p>\n
In Solidarity,
\nFred<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Colleagues: As I’m sure you know by now, we have a State budget for fiscal year 2017-2018. \u00a0Though we were not successful at reaching our ambitious goals in advocating for major investment in full-time faculty and staff and extensive support for our teaching hospitals, the budget that was finalized over the weekend presents us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/cobleskill\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/cobleskill\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/cobleskill\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/cobleskill\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/cobleskill\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/cobleskill\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1533,"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/cobleskill\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532\/revisions\/1533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/cobleskill\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/cobleskill\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/cobleskill\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}