Recommended budget approaches sent to EWG

Senior UC leaders have established budget targets to absorb a $500 million reduction in state funding for the fiscal year that begins July 1. The Office of the President has preliminarily assigned ANR a $6.2 million reduction for FY 2011-12. The exact amount will not be certain until final action on the State budget and action by the Board of Regents.

VP Dooley appointed an ad hoc budget committee to develop principles to guide the implementation of the $6.2 million reduction and, where appropriate, to make specific recommendations to achieve the budget target.

The committee recently completed their task by reporting their information to ANR Program Council and ANR’s Executive Working Group. In their short time span, 18 days, the committee developed a set of recommended guiding principles for application in the budget decision process. These principles included:

·         Layoffs will be resorted to last.

·         To the maximum extent possible, preserve the academic reversion pool for hiring of new academics.

·         Support academics equitably across all program areas.

·         Make decisions that can be enacted immediately.

·         All programs and all units are “on the table.”

·         When program funding is reduced, give the director the ability to determine how best to enact the reduction.

·         Consider elimination of some programs/program areas rather than eroding funding for all programs. If a proposed reduction results in inadequate support for program development or delivery, then program should be considered for elimination.

The Committee also identified four approaches to reaching the $6.2 million target reduction:

·         Reductions of programs and units

·         Program elimination

·         Maximizing the use of endowments

·         Revenue enhancement

The committee concluded that it will take a blend of these approaches to meet the target budget reduction rather than any one approach.

The committee concluded their work by applying the guiding principles and a blend of approaches to develop a budget reduction scenario. All of the information developed by the committee and the comments and recommendations made by Program Council following the committee’s presentation have been provided to ANR’s Executive Working Group. VP Dooley expects to make budget decisions as soon as is prudent, taking into consideration state budget developments.

The ANR Update announcing appointment of the budget committee with the list of committee members is at http://ucanr.org/sites/anrstaff/?blogpost=4903&blogasset=643.

View or leave comments for the Executive Working Group

This announcement is also posted and archived on the ANR Update pages.

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