Denied pay increase concerns legislator

Arkansas Tech only one to give full raise

— Legislators gathering in Little Rock next month likely will discuss the decision by all but one of Arkansas’ fouryear universities to withhold full pay increases from classified employees despite a law that provided for the raises this fiscal year, a co-chairman of the Joint Budget Committee said Monday.

All state agencies gave the full raises, said Richard Weiss, director of the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration. But Arkansas Tech University in Russellville was the only four-year public university to give more than a partial payplan increase to classified workers this fiscal year, an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette survey found.

State lawmakers will begin budget hearings Jan. 12, with the first ones focusing on higher education, said state Sen. Gilbert Baker, DConway, the committee cochairman. The General Assembly’s fiscal session begins Feb. 8.

“I do believe that the support that higher education received in the [most recent] legislative session was in part based on giving those folks a raise,” Baker said.

“So I would imagine that’s something that will be discussed during the upcoming fiscal session. ... I would imagine that Dr. [Jim] Purcell will be asked about that.” Purcell is director of the Arkansas Department of Higher Education.

In October, the state announced hefty budget cuts, including a $15.8 million reduction for two- and fouryear colleges.

The classified-employee raises cost Arkansas Tech about $500,000 before the school lost $673,164 in state funding. A classified position is part of a group of employees, such as accountants or administrative assistants.

Every other public university in Arkansas gave only apart of the classified workers’ raises after the state agreed last spring to a partial implementation of the pay plan.

In a May 13 memo to college presidents and chancellors, Purcell wrote: “The Governor’s Office has heard our/your concerns and is agreeing to a less aggressive implementation of the pay plan at the colleges and universities.”

Purcell cautioned that slower implementation “could become an administrative nightmare as new rules and procedures must be developed.”

He also advised “that full implementation of the pay plan as soon as practical is highly desired.”

“The current economic uncertainty gives us all cause to strategically plan and wisely budget for the future,” he said.

Purcell reminded the colleges that their budgets “are dependent on legislative and executive branch support.”

“The level of support that higher education institutions received in this tough budget year was to some extent based upon an understanding that the institutions would implement the pay plan,” he said.

Unlike state agencies, Weiss noted Monday, colleges do not answer directly to the governor under the Arkansas Constitution.

“They [colleges] have some latitude as to how they implement all of this stuff,” Weiss said. “They used this latitude and decided not to implement” the raises in full.

“We don’t have any control or very little control overcolleges and universities,” he said.

The colleges “have been real protective over ... their ability to dole out pay increases,” Weiss said.

Weiss doesn’t believe state cuts hit the schools harder than state agencies. “Not in my opinion,” he said, “but that’s my opinion.”

But Rep. Bruce Maloch, DMagnolia, and the Joint Budget Committee’s co-chairman, said some funding cuts did hit higher education harder.

Colleges have “so much flexibility” under the Arkansas Constitution, Maloch said, that he thinks “the Legislature expects some things to be done differently.”

On the smaller salary increases, Maloch said he needed to look at the amount of money the schools lost from a certain state fund before making “a specific judgment on how much heartburn thatcauses me.”

Had the classified pay plan been fully implemented, its total cost to the state’s colleges was projected at about $13 million, said Higher Education spokesman Dale Ellis.

A Higher Education report released in October said some institutions could not fund the pay plan provided for under Act 688 of 2009, but the report did not identify the schools.

The report’s statement was never intended to “imply that any institution was doing something wrong,” Ellis said in a recent e-mail.

The statement “was simply to illustrate the financial dilemmas that many institutions are experiencing due to the cost of the full implementation of the pay plan ... declining state support, andpressures to avoid tuition increases,” Ellis said.

Some schools have had to cut budgets or dip into reserves.

Arkansas Tech, for example, where classified workers received the full raise, canceled the search for some advertised faculty positions because of the state funding cuts.

“If we’d only given half the pay increase, that [remaining money] would have been available to do other things with,” said David Moseley, Arkansas Tech’s senior vice president for administration and finance.

Arkansas State University in Jonesboro is using a part of its reserves that would have gone to classified employees’ pay raises under the original plan - $484,324 - to help offset its budget cuts, which totaled about $1.2 million, spokesman Markham Howe said.

ASU is also handling the cuts by allowing some vacancies to remain unfilled or by delaying some previously planned hirings.

The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville saw a $2.42 million state-funding cut in October, but that did not affect the school’s current budget, said spokesman Steve Voorhies.

However, the cut reduced reserves, he said. Further, a plan to provide year-end stipends in one-time funds to faculty and staff was canceled.

The University of Central Arkansas, hit with an almost $1.2 million state cut, is taking $500,000 from academics, according to a chart provided by Alan Russell, interim vice president for financial services.

UCA’s Academic Affairs department covered its loss with money set aside for such things as equipment and parttime salary supplements, Provost Lance Grahn said.

In Magnolia, Southern Arkansas University - which lost $325,489 in state funding - cut academic spending by $151,190.

The University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, which lost $325,724, cut $240,000 from academic “contingency funds,” or reserves.

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock used new state funding to cover the majority of the $1.3 million it had to cut, spokesman Judy Williams said.

“The remainder was covered by tuition revenue that resulted from our increased enrollment this fall,” she said.

Realizing “the uncertainty of state funding,” the University of Arkansas at Monticello had set aside $375,046 in contingency funds, which more than covered its $325,724 cut, said Jay Jones, vice chancellor for finance and administration.

The University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, which lost $432,254, also had a contingency fund and did not make any across-the-board reductions in spending, said Mark Horn, vice chancellor for finance and administration.

Henderson State University covered its $383,327 cut with savings from “multiple institutional budget lines,” including property and health insurance and salary contingency, said Charles Welch, president of the Arkadelphia school. No positions, salaries or benefits were cut, he said, and no cuts were made to any department or program.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11 on 12/29/2009

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