Dear Colleagues,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As I indicated earlier this week, we have been studying the\nGovernor\u2019s Executive Budget and the Chancellor\u2019s State of the University System\naddress. What follows is an in-depth analysis of all areas relevant to our\nwork. As you may know by now, the budget is not good for higher education.\nHowever, I remain hopeful that our extensive work over the past eight months\nwith our legislative friends will enable us to be successful in improving the\nfinal budget by April 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here are the details:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
OVERALL<\/strong>: The Executive Budget proposal for\nSUNY is essentially flat and includes no increases in direct base aid to the\ncampuses. The Governor\u2019s declaration of a 3% increase in support for\nHigher Education is largely due to: increases in fringe benefits costs that the\nstate covers, an increase in bonded capital costs, and the proposed expansion\nof the Excelsior program. The Executive Budget includes nothing to address the\n12-year disinvestment in State support for SUNY (beginning with State aid cuts\n2007-08). Regrettably, the Chancellor was silent about SUNY\u2019s need for\nadditional State support in her State of the System address yesterday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rational Tuition and Maintenance of Effort:<\/strong>\n Unexpectedly, the Governor\u2019s budget proposes to extend the current\n\u201cRationale Tuition Plan\u201d and the existing Maintenance of Effort (MOE) language\nincluded in the 2019\/20 Enacted Budget through AY 2024\/25. This extension\nwould allow resident undergraduate tuition rates to continue to increase by\n$200 per year while providing no guarantee of additional State support or any\nrelief from the ever increasing TAP Gap that continuing tuition increases\ngenerates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n UUP Contractual Raises<\/strong>: The Executive Budget\ndoes not include the acceleration of $67.7 million in Direct State Tax Support\nSUNY requested to assist campuses with absorbing the impact of the second half\nof the retroactive salary increases paid in AY 2019\/20. UUP and SUNY will\nadvocate for this acceleration to be included in the 30-Day Amendment Period. <\/p>\n\n\n\n TAP Gap<\/strong>: Despite significant hard work and\nongoing advocacy by our members and student allies, neither the Executive\nBudget or the Chancellor in her State of the System address uttered the words\n\u201cTAP Gap\u201d. Ignoring this problem does not make it go away, and the negative\nimpact of this lost revenue only grows each year. This year the impact is over\n$70 million system-wide. The ever growing TAP Gap is a social\ninjustice which deprived our campuses of desperately needed resources to meet\nthe needs of our TAP-eligible students. We believe the Assembly and\nSenate members understand this issue more than ever before and we will continue\nto advocate for TAP Gap relief in the budget and legislatively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hospitals<\/strong>: On a positive note, the $230\nmillion commitment of State Medicaid funds to provide the required match to\nfederal Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) funding for the SUNY\nHospitals was not disturbed in this year\u2019s budget proposal. The Capital Budget\nalso includes an additional $150 million in new capital appropriations for SUNY\nhospitals — $50 million each for Upstate, Stony Brook, and Downstate.\n However, the Governor\u2019s budget does not include restoration of the\nState subsidy for the SUNY hospitals. In addition, to address the deficit\nin the state Medicaid program, the Governor has announced the creation of a\nMedicaid Redesign Team II (MRT II) to identify $2.5 billion in additional\nsavings in Medicaid. It is unclear at this time what impact these\nnot-yet-identified savings may have on our academic medical centers. We\nneed to continue to re-double our efforts on restoration of the hospital\nsubsidy and will closely monitor what impact MRT II may have and state budget\nnegotiations roll out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Capital Matching Program<\/strong>: The Chancellor\u2019s\nbudget request in November asked for the establishment of a Capital Matching\nGrant Program; a 2 to 1 match of State-supported bonds to Campus resources. The\nExecutive budget proposal adopted this proposal and provides $200 million in\ncapital appropriations for new projects which can only be accessed if campuses\nprovide the match. This proposal divides our system into a collection of \u201chaves\nand have nots\u201d. We need a real capital funding appropriation that addresses\ndeferred maintenance that our campuses grapple with following over a decade of\nflat budgets as well as a vision for the future that is green, efficient and\nattracts students to our campuses. We need to meet the needs of not just today,\nbut tomorrow. We cannot do this with our aging infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n EOP\/EOC\/Attain<\/strong>– For the first time in many\nyears the Governor is maintaining prior year funding levels for the opportunity\nprograms and not cutting the legislative adds that we fight for successfully\neach year. This is a bright spot in an overall bad budget, but only if the\nfunding table targets for Higher Education budget negotiations are not cut from\nprior year levels. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Individual Programs<\/strong>: The Executive\nBudget removes legislative adds (a $2.9M decrease in funding from 2019\/20\nEnacted Budget levels) for the following University-wide programs:<\/p>\n\n\n\n – ($0.7M): Small Business Development Centers <\/p>\n\n\n\n – ($0.6M): Graduate Diversity Fellowships <\/p>\n\n\n\n – ($0.5M): Mental Health Services \/ Tele-Counseling\nNetwork <\/p>\n\n\n\n – ($0.4M): Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion \/\nHispanic Leadership Institute <\/p>\n\n\n\n – ($0.3M): Cornell Veterinary College <\/p>\n\n\n\n – ($0.2M): Cornell Center in Buffalo <\/p>\n\n\n\n – ($0.1M): Center for Women in Government <\/p>\n\n\n\n – ($0.1M): American Chestnut Research & Restoration\nProject <\/p>\n\n\n\n – ($0.1M): Benjamin Center <\/p>\n\n\n\n – ($0.1M): Stony Brook Algonquian Language Revitalization <\/p>\n\n\n\n Our work will necessitate a lot of effort from all UUP\nmembers. There will be several calls to action including rallies at several\ncampuses and direct advocacy in Albany and in-district. Today I am on my way to\nNYC for a meeting of the NYSUT Higher Ed Policy Council. Unified as we must all\nbe, tonight and tomorrow I will be working with our colleagues at NYSUT, PSC\nand Community Colleges on developing a collective strategy for this important\nfight. I will report back to the statewide exec board about this strategy and\nprovide more details on Friday. I will brief Chapter Presidents on the next\nconference call scheduled for February 11th<\/sup> and 13th<\/sup>. We\nare also working diligently with the Fiscal Policy Institute, NYPIRG, SUNY\nStudent Association, PSC, CUNY SS, and NYSUT on pursuing progressive revenue\nraisers to support higher education. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In solidarity,<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fred Kowl – UUP President <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Colleagues, As I indicated earlier this week, we have been studying the Governor\u2019s Executive Budget and the Chancellor\u2019s State of the University System address. What follows is an in-depth … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/purchase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/purchase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/purchase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/purchase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/purchase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/purchase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1115,"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/purchase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114\/revisions\/1115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/purchase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/purchase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uuphost.org\/purchase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}