UB budget to meet only current obligations
Wagner tells Faculty Senate UB may not finalize spending plan until October

By MARA McGINNIS
Reporter Assistant Editor

The university's budget will not provide "any kind of resources beyond current obligations" and it may be October before UB has the figures needed from SUNY to finalize its budget for the current fiscal year, Senior Vice President Robert Wagner told the Faculty Senate at its Sept. 7 meeting.

Wagner said he has received no word on how SUNY will manage the lack of a state allocation to cover base costs of inflation, replacement of one-time 1998-99 revenues, funding for additional enrollment and sponsored-program activities, all of which adds up to a gap of some $28 million systemwide.

If SUNY does not find a way to cover these base costs and the deficit is distributed among the campuses, UB will suffer a loss of approximately $3 million, according to an earlier report by Provost David Triggle to the Faculty Senate Executive Committee.

Wagner said that salary increases for members of United University Professions under the existing contract will be paid, although he said it is not known whether the source of that funding will be the state or SUNY.

The poor budget outlook from Wagner prompted some senators from the College of Arts and Sciences to raise concerns about an announcement last week by Dean Kerry Grant of a hiring freeze for the coming year in most departments in the college.

Barbara Bono, associate professor and chair of the Department of English, pointed out that the hiring freeze in the college, compounded by this year's significantly higher enrollment, means increased workloads for faculty.

"What I'm hearing is that there is little support for the core liberal-arts mission of this university," said Bono. "What kind of Research-I institution is it that has no hiring going on in the core arts-and-sciences division of the university from which undergraduate and distinguished graduate education emanates?"

Wagner said that although UB's workload is up, "there is no funding for the additional workload simply because the system's resource picture hasn't changed."

Wagner noted that there are between 3,000 and 5,000 additional students across the SUNY system this year and no additional resources.

He added that SUNY's resource allocation methodology, or RAM, was built on the assumption that there would be additional resources to be distributed, but the system faces a "zero-sum game."

"People thought that RAM was a funding program, but this fiscal year has proven that is not the case," Wagner explained. "It is an allocation model and doesn't necessarily generate more dollars."

Samuel D. Schack, professor of mathematics, said that Grant's no-hiring announcement "is causing (Grant) and the provost to violate written agreements they had with department chairs, which is doing an incredible amount of damage to the credibility of the administration and to its ability to plan in a constructive way with departments for the long term.

"The effects on a research university of periods of no hiring are profound," added Shack. "And not merely because we don't get new people, but because it tells the best young people to get out while the getting is good."