Wednesday, January 26, 2011
The House Appropriations Committee approved a bill Tuesday to reduce state university employee pay by 7.5 percent. If signed into law, the bill would reduce a state university employee’s final six paychecks of the 2011 fiscal year. The bill would require those dollars to be spent on campus deferred building and maintenance projects. The bill would also prevent some state employees from receiving wage increases.
In a statement from the Board of Regents, Chairman Gary Sherrer deemed the committee’s action unfair and unneccessary.
“Removing dollars from the paychecks hard-working university employees depend upon, and then spending those dollars on building maintenance, doesn’t result in any savings to the state,” Sherrer said. “We call upon the legislature and the governor to reject this unnecessary and unfair proposal.”
Jack Martin, deputy director of university communications, said professors haven’t received normal annual pay increases for the past two years, making it difficult to retain faculty. Martin said that Yang Zhang, former associate professor of computational medicine and bioinformatics, left the university in 2009 after receiving an offer from the University of Michigan.
State of the University address
Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little
When: Thursday at 4 p.m.
Where: Woodruff Auditorium, Kansas Union
Contact: 864-3131
The event is free and open to the public.
“It was a situation where we weren’t able to match the offer and keep the professor here,” Martin said. “Because of reduced resources, there is more competition for talented faculty and staff.”
The goal of the bill, written primarily by conservative Republicans, is to provide a financial cushion and to help balance the state budget. In the next fiscal year, Kansas faces a budget shortfall of $550 million. The proposed cut would save the state more than $16 million, but half of the money would be retained by the Board of Regents to be used for maintenance projects on college campuses.
The bill must be approved by both the House and Senate before going to Gov. Sam Brownback. It is unclear when the bill will be debated, but the governor has asked that the cuts be on his desk by the end of the month if possible.
Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little is expected to address the issue of salary cuts during her State of the University address Thursday.
— Edited by Jacque Weber
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