Senate pledges to reverse cuts

Senate leaders sent letters to top UW System officials this week pledging to reverse more than $100 million in proposed budget cuts.

The UW System has frozen admissions and hiring in anticipation of major cuts needed to help erase a state budget deficit topping $1 billion.

All 18 Senate Democrats, a majority, say they will support the changes, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Chvala writes in the letter to UW System President Katharine Lyall.

“At a time when we are looking to jump start our economy, raise incomes in Wisconsin and reverse ‘brain drain’ it is simply bad public policy to propose devastating cuts to an area that will help us to reach these goals,” says Senator Mark Meyer, chair of the Senate Universities, Housing and Government Operations Committee. “It is critical for us to do what it takes to maintain the quality and accessibility of the University of Wisconsin.”

Bracing for budget cuts, UW–Madison has formalized a hiring slowdown, says Provost Peter Spear. “Deans, directors and other administrators will continue to carefully analyze each vacancy and determine whether it is essential to educating our students. That policy already has kept many positions vacant that otherwise would be filled,” Spear says.

The Board of Regents on Friday halted undergraduate admissions in the face of an additional $20 million cut to the UW System imposed by the Joint Finance Committee. The the Assembly Republican Caucus added another $50 million in cuts for a total of more than $100 million.

Lyall notes that 85 percent of the university’s budget is tied up in salaries, and such a large proposed cut would put a significant number of university positions on the chopping block.

“We realize that enrollment cuts and associated cuts in our workforce will be very damaging not only to campuses but to their local communities as well. These are brain gain jobs, good paying jobs,” says Lyall, and “we would hate to see them lost.”