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Budget Update to Campus

Dear Colleagues:

I wanted to share a quick update with you as the state budget process continues to unfold. Particularly in light of the preliminary “good news” e-mail I sent to you a week or so ago, it’s important -- although admittedly much less pleasant -- to share with you more sobering news that additional funds for SUNY and for New Paltz have been vetoed by the Governor.

Construction funding vetoed last Friday included the $10 million appropriation obtained by our state legislators, Assemblyman Kevin Cahill ('77) and Senator John Bonacic for renovations and expansion of the Student Union Building. Unless the Legislature overrides the Governor’s veto, this money will not be available to New Paltz. The base five-year capital plan for SUNY (which did not include SUB funding) was not vetoed.

As you may also have read in the newspapers, both houses of the Legislature had agreed to include an additional $50 million of operating funds to SUNY’s budget. These funds were intended to restore cuts made to many campus’s (including New Paltz’s) state allocation to buffer other SUNY campuses from financial distress in FY 03-04. I was sorry to learn on Friday that although the $50 million restoration for SUNY was not vetoed, the Governor’s Budget Office nevertheless plans to “impound” two-thirds of it and only make the remaining onethird available to SUNY this year. We will know more precisely what this means when we receive our budget allocations from System in the coming weeks.

In a nutshell, here is the challenge we face: Last year $3.3 million was taken from this campus’s state appropriation to help bail out other campuses. And thus we have had to rely on reserves and summer tuition dollars to cover some of our annual expenditures. Receiving only one-third of this money back will obviously not let us address all of our pressing needs (or even the range of needs that $3.3 million of earned state allocation would have let us address).

On a more positive note, we are assured by the Chancellor’s Office that negotiated UUP salary increases for FY 04-05 will be covered in this year’s campus allocations.

The annual budget dance is not yet over, and I shall keep you apprised of future developments, including any effort to override the Governor’s vetoes (and any steps I am taking to support such an effort). In the meantime though, I hope this update will help you understand our current position.