To the Point:

SUNY’s time is now

By William E. Scheuerman
UUP President

It’s that time of the year. Once again UUP is launching a political campaign asking the state Legislature to provide funding for SUNY above the level recommended by the governor. We’re making our usual bipartisan efforts: a statewide ad campaign, regular meetings with the leadership of both Houses, regular weekly lobbying in Albany by members of our Legislation Committee, lobbying in the home districts, rank-and-file participation in letter-writing campaigns, an Albany rally and other chapter activities. We go into the latest budget struggle in fairly good shape, having just achieved an amazing pre-budget victory that convinced the Legislature and the governor to put an extra $92.5 million into SUNY’s hospitals as part of the new Health Care Reform Act (HCRA)/Workforce Retention and Recruit-ment Bill. This is a significant victory for a number of reasons. First, SUNY’s hospitals were added in the 11th hour to this legislation, which was initially directed only at “not-for-profit” institutions. Second, when the $92.5 million from HCRA is combined with the $92 million for the hospitals in the governor’s proposed budget, we’re finally on the way to solving our “intractable” hospital problem. I emphasize we’re on our way, but we still need more fiscal support from the state to totally resolve the problem. A last bit of pre-budget good news concerns SUNY’s University Colleges of Technology (UCTs). We’re working with SUNY to prepare a package that we can jointly bring to the Legislature to address the technology and salary needs of the UCTs. Several months ago, skeptics said we could never convince SUNY to address these issues. Guess what? We have. Despite these early political successes I just mentioned, we’re once again facing a tough battle to get decent funding for SUNY for fiscal 2002-03. But, given the extent of public support for SUNY, we believe we’ll have a successful year. Here’s the story: Our budget priorities this year focus on the state’s economic recovery. With a budget deficit of almost $6 billion looming over New York state for fiscal 2002-03, UUP needs to protect SUNY from budget cuts that could diminish its ability to provide workforce development, valuable research, cutting-edge technological education, medical education, patient care and myriad other services that will help our state regain its competitive advantage. The governor’s budget proposal would keep SUNY funding at last year’s level. There are no new funds to cover inflation and incurred new costs, such as salary increases. In effect, it amounts to a 5 percent cut that, according to SUNY’s campus presidents, could lead to layoffs of hundreds of untenured faculty and professional staff; perhaps even some tenured faculty could lose their positions. This in spite of increasing student enrollments for five straight years. We’ve known for some time now that underfunding SUNY undermines New York. But others are starting to see the light, too. The editors of the Plattsburgh Press Republican, for instance, recently wrote, “If New York is to rebound quickly from the unexpected mess it woke up to on Sept.12, it is going to have to rely heavily on a vibrant state university system. It can’t pinch pennies and hope to turn them into dollars” (1/23/02). According to a statewide poll of registered, likely voters conducted on behalf of UUP from Jan. 9-12, 79.1 percent have a favorable impression of the SUNY system. Among those voters who are employers or who hire people as part of their jobs, 90 percent claimed they were confident that SUNY graduates were well prepared to enter the workforce. When asked if funding for SUNY should remain the same as last year or should be increased, 68 percent of the respondents said that New York should increase state funding to SUNY, while only 25 percent said it should remain the same. Our new ad campaign is based on the strong, positive impression of SUNY that was reflected in this poll. Yes, there is tremendous public support for SUNY, and it’s now up to us to transform that support into dollars for our University. With your help and continued support, I know we’ll do just that.