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System faces $7.5 million of potential budget cuts

Posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009, 1:04 am

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Governor Baldacci has proposed a potential budget cut for state-funded entities due to a shortfall of more than $200 million in revenue, which would likely cost the University of Maine System as many as 500 students and 35 employees.

Early in October, Baldacci sent every state-funded entity a target budget cut for the next two years. It is now each department’s responsibility to figure out how to reach their target.

“He basically sent targets out to agencies, departments and entities that received state funding, all across state government, and asked them to submit a proposal on how they would meet those targets. For the university system, that means a division of that target comes from among its campuses, so for UMaine that means that nearly half of that reduction would come from our campus,” said Emily Cain, D-Orono.

Cain said Mainers should also worry about curtailments. A curtailment means that if the governor realized the state budget is out of balance, he can request an immediate cut in state funding to departments. Cain said state departments will know in the next few weeks whether a curtailment is going to be necessary.

According to Janet Waldron, vice president for administration and finance, even without a state curtailment the university system would be required to cut $7.5 million in the next two fiscal years because of the $200 million target. Out of that $7.5 million, the system would likely cut $3.75 million from UMaine each fiscal year.

“All the targets are still being reviewed prior to inclusion and the governor’s bill and, or executive order,” Waldron said.

Based on previous cuts to the university system, this $3.75 million decrease in the university’s budget each year is estimated to potentially cause the university to face the risk of losing 300 to 500 students and 25 to 35 faculty, staff and administrators, Waldron said.

“When an academic program is eliminated, then obviously the students wouldn’t be coming to the university system to take the course. So they would go somewhere else,” Waldron said.

A potential of losing those 300 to 500 students would mean less tuition revenue for the university.

“The state appropriation for the university of the curtailment before the $3.5 million is taken out is about 39 percent of our base budget, and the tuition and fee revenue is about 50 percent of the budget,” Waldron said. “It has put the pressure on state funds and has put the pressure on tuition and fees, and has done so consistently.”

UMaine administrators are not sure yet where the cuts will come from.

“I don’t know where exactly the reductions will actually come from at UMaine. That will be made by President [Robert] Kennedy, Vice President Waldron, and the deans and other administrators at UMaine, hopefully with some input from faculty, students and staff,” Cain said. “There’s really no extra money floating around at the campus level, or at the state level.”

Cain said she is worried about the detriments of the budget decrease.

“I’m deeply concerned about the ways in which the cuts will affect the campus, and I am going to be working to advocate to minimize those cuts,” Cain said.