It is obvious to me that one of the biggest reasons we were able to set aside the so-called Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act (PHEEIA) was because someone got involved.

You.

Thousands of you spoke out against the Act, calling, e-mailing and faxing legislators. From the outset, we spoke up against the elimination of SUNY’s governmental oversight and its accountability under existing state statutes. We made access and affordability statewide issues.

SUNY supporters, many of them contacted through our Save SUNY website, www.savesuny.org, also took action and played an important role. That site and the UUP website yielded nearly 25,000 faxes and more than 4,500 online petition signatures.

And despite Gov. David Paterson’s insistence that PHEEIA be part of the state’s 2010-11 budget, the legislators listened, even the two senators from Buffalo and Long Island who held out for weeks for PHEEIA’s approval. Finally, on Aug. 3, the state budget was adopted without the ill-conceived Act.

The outcome could have been drastically different. PHEEIA had somehow become the last stumbling block to passing a very late state budget. Without your loud voices and UUP’s full-court press, legislators may have felt forced to give in.

They felt forced in May, when they approved an emergency budget extender bill that included the governor’s plan to furlough 100,000 state workers—including UUPers—one day a week until the budget was passed. State business would have stopped without the extender bill.

That’s when we stepped in and took care of business. UUP and other state unions immediately obtained a stay to stop the furloughs, which were blocked May 28 by federal Judge Lawrence Kahn. Another challenge met; another crisis averted.

While the furloughs are history, PHEEIA isn’t. This nebulous proposal, which was pushed hard by SUNY, will be back at some point, you can be sure of that. Senate Democrats say they have a “framework” of a deal on PHEEIA with the Assembly, but no details have emerged since that Aug. 3 announcement.

While we should feel satisfaction for a job well done, it’s not time to be patting each other on the back.

We must be ready, at a moment’s notice, to forcefully speak out against PHEEIA, which would essentially corporatize SUNY by allowing campuses to raise tuition and enter into contracts and leases without state oversight.

We must also be ready to combat PHEEIA rhetoric, like inaccuracies found in an August Buffalo News editorial blasting legislators for dropping PHEEIA from the budget. The editorial claims SUNY tuition increases were returned to the state in the past, and that PHEEIA would end “state sweeps” of tuition money into the general fund. That has never been the case; SUNY has always controlled tuition dollars.

Here’s more reality: SUNY sustained a $152 million state aid cut in the new budget. The New York State Theatre Institute lost $1.6 million—more than half of what it got last year.

More hiring freezes, job cuts, larger classes and fewer courses will undoubtedly be the outcome. Campuses have dealt with those issues over the past two years due to state budget cuts that account for more than 25 percent of SUNY’s operating budget.

The time is now for SUNY to help cover shortfalls in SUNY’s state-slashed budget. I’ve said this before: UUP will hold the chancellor to her promise to use $147 million in reserves to help cover state cuts.

We’d like to see SUNY offer even more financial help for our cash-strapped campuses and hospitals. More funding would add needed fuel to SUNY, one of the state’s most prolific economic engines. And it will allow campuses to continue to offer a quality, affordable education to students across New York, which, after all, is SUNY’s mission.

Looking back, we can feel secure in knowing that we fought hard for what we believed in, and we made a difference. As we enter a new academic year, we will face our share of challenges. This union will step up and meet those challenges head-on. But we need you to take a stand.

I hope and trust that you will join us as we face each crisis and strive to keep UUP strong.