Staff Advisors to the UC Regents Discuss Budget Crisis

Ioana Patringenaru | April 13, 2009

Budget cuts, retirement benefits and salary increases were some of the topics discussed when two employees who serve as Staff Advisors to the UC Regents visited UC San Diego last week.

Bill Johansen, a senior business manager at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Edward Abeyta, the registrar and director of academic services at UCSD Extension, spoke during a gathering organized by the UCSD Staff Association Tuesday at the Cross-Cultural Center. The two take part in open sessions of the Board of Regents meetings and also sit on some of the board’s committees.

Edward Abeyta, the UCSD Extension registrar, will serve as a staff advisor to the UC Regents next academic year.

Right now, the budget is the focus of many discussions both for the Regents and the Office of the President, Johansen said. Last week, UC President Mark Yudof issued a statement announcing that his goal is to craft a flexible Regental Standing Order that would serve as a broad legal framework to allow for systemwide and campus-by-campus furloughs and/or temporary and permanent salary reductions, should deteriorating financial conditions so require. Yudof also said he plans to submit the order to the UC Regents for consideration at a May meeting.

At Tuesday's meeting, Johansen said he doesn't think UC will take a one-size fits all approach. More likely, campuses will find out the size of their budget cuts and will be allowed to design their own plans to implement them, he said. At the last Regents board meeting, all UC campuses submitted plans showing what they are doing to deal with the budget crisis.

At a recent town hall meeting, UCSD Chancellor Marye Anne Fox said that the campus took a $4 million hit during the 2008-09 budget year and an additional $12 million mid-year cut. All along, officials have tried to make sure that cuts have a minimal impact on classrooms and laboratories, she added.

Officials have cut back by 52 percent the number of academic hires the campus planned to make. In addition, a soft hiring freeze is in place, meaning that vice chancellors must authorize new hires. Some academic enrichment programs have been suspended. As a result, core funding for classroom teaching, teaching assistant and lecturer positions as well as student financial support have been spared, Fox said.

Budget cuts from the state have also made it more difficult to restart contributions to the UC Retirement Plan, Johansen said. The final state budget didn’t set aside any money to cover UC’s contributions to the plan. University officials are currently looking into other options to launch a restart, which was set for April 15, 2010, he said.

Bill Johansen, a senior business manager at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, spoke on campus Tuesday.

Abeyta, the UCSD Extension registrar, will sit on a UC post-retirement task force looking into similar issues. So far, about 80 percent of employees in the UC system never contributed to the defined benefit plan. Some questions the task force will examine include a transition to a defined contribution plan for future employees and the future of retirement health benefits. The process will include a lot of input from staff members, Johansen said.

He added one of his concerns is that staff members will now have to contribute to the retirement system without receiving raises to cover the contributions. The UC faculty had originally said that they wouldn’t contribute without equivalent raises, Johansen said. But they now have backed away from that position because of the budget crisis, he added.

In the end, this all becomes a retention and morale issue, Johansen said. Staff advisors have been talking to the Office of the President about implementing some inexpensive measures that would boost employee morale, he said.

For example, the university could create a leave program for bonding with a new child, a benefit already available to state employees and staff members in the California State University system. The measure would particularly benefit parents who adopt or foster children, he said. This also is an issue for faculty, he pointed out.

The current crisis has its roots in past budget cuts, Johansen also said. State funding for the UC system has plummeted since 1975, he added. Today, the state is spending 40 percent less per student than it did during the 1975-76 academic year. Just a decade ago, the university system’s budget represented 7 percent of the state’s general fund. It now represents 3 percent, Johansen said.

“We’ve been so good at doing more with less,” he said. “I think the time has come to start doing less with less.”