FAYETTEVILLE — In one of his last official acts as president of the University of Arkansas System, B. Alan Sugg earlier this week authorized deferred pay raises that could affect thousands of system employees for fiscal 2012.
G. David Gearhart, chancellor of the Fayetteville campus, told a faculty group of Sugg’s decision on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, Ben Beaumont, chief spokesman for the UA System, confirmed the commitment.
Sugg’s retirement from the presidency of the state’s largest university system went into effect at the end of business on Monday.
New President Donald Bobbitt, former provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of Texas at Arlington and a former dean of the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at UA-Fayetteville, began workon Tuesday.
Gearhart told the Campus Faculty body at UA-Fayetteville that Sugg called him at 4:30 p.m. on Monday to deliver the news.
“This is a done deal,” Gearhart told the group.
The UA System encompasses 70,000 students and 18,000 employees on 17 campuses and units across the state.
In addition to four-year universities in Fayetteville, Fort Smith, Little Rock, Monticello and Pine Bluff, the system includes the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, the Division of Agriculture.
Also operating under the system are community colleges in Batesville, De Queen, Helena-West Helena, Hope and Morrilton.
Sugg said in May that UA campuses would hold off on providing pay increases for faculty and staff and directed the schools to monitor state revenue collections with the hope that pay raises can be provided later in the year.
“Because those projections have been sound, President Sugg went ahead and authorized those campuses to move forward,” Beaumont said on Wednesday.
Leaders at UA-Fort Smith are aware of Sugg’s directive but they need “a day or two” to decide how to make the increases, said chief spokesman Sondra LaMar.
Pauline Thomas, vice chancellor for finance and administration at the Pine Bluff campus, said she was told of the authorization on Tuesday night.
“We have not had a chanceto do any type of analysis” of how to provide the raises, Thomas said. “We did reserve some funds. We’ll do what we can.”
Judy Williams, chief spokesman for UALR, said her campus has yet to definitively hear from the system about the raise authorization.
UA-Fayetteville has allocated a 2.5 percent merit increase pool for its non-classified employees, to be distributed in December retroactive to July 1, the campus’ finance chief said on Wednesday. The pool totals about $3 million, said Don Pederson, vice chancellor for finance and administration.
The eligible employees include 1,141 faculty members and 1,049 non-classified staff, Pederson said.
“Since it is a merit raise, not every one in that group may get a raise,” Pederson said.
Non-classified workers include teaching staff and administrators whose compensation is not dictated by a state pay scale. Instead of awarding the raises at the start of the fiscal 2012 year on July 1, however, the $3 million was pooled in a reserve account, Gearhartwrote in a memo to the staff in May.
UA’s classified employees, or those in non-faculty positions such as administrative assistants, custodians, and grounds workers, saw a “modest” base increase in pay of 1.5 percent starting June 1.
UA-Fayetteville’s non-classified employees didn’t get raises in fiscal 2010 as part of overall belt tightening. Salaries are paid from the universities’ educational and general fund, made up of tuition, fees and state contributions.
Gearhart emphasized during the Campus Faculty meeting that his campus, the state’s oldest and largest public institution in the state, has not received an increase in state appropriations over the last five years.
The university has budgeted $300 million in its Educational and General Fund for fiscal 2012, and $121 million of that total will come from the state, Pederson said. The fund is composed of state appropriations and student tuition and fees and makes up the largest part of UA’s budget.
The state’s support of highereducation “has dwindled over the last 20 years, precipitously,” Gearhart said. “It’s continuing to decline.”
As for the raises, UA-Fayetteville implemented a similar contingency program for the last fiscal year, which started July 1, 2011. It awarded the raises in November, and nonclassified employees saw bigger paychecks starting in December.
Richard Weiss, director of the state Department of Finance and Administration, said earlier this year in a memo to state agency directors, as well as presidents and chancellors, that funding was not provided for a 1.86 percent cost-of-living adjustment approved by the Arkansas Legislature for state employees.
As a result, the salaries of most state employees didn’t increase on July 1. Matt De-Cample, spokesman for Gov. Mike Beebe, reiterated on Wednesday that the decision to provide higher-education raises is at the discretion of university leaders.
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Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 11/03/2011