Spring 2002

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NEVER GIVE UP Chancellor Williams on the budget crisis

by Patricia Wright

“Ultimately, among these good things, we must prioritize” - Chancellor Marcellette Williams midway through her one-year term. (photo by Steven Long) UMASS AMHERST'S 26TH LEADER, CHANCELLOR Marcellette Williams, was undoubtedly too wise after eight years as deputy to her predecessor, David Scott, to think that the one-year interim tenure she accepted last spring would be a routine caretaker’s mission. She could hardly have foreseen, however, the challenges of presiding over a campus responding first to a national tragedy, then to budgetary problems, of such startling proportions. We asked her this spring to offer perspective on this painful and still unfolding period in the life of the campus. Can you summarize for us the budget problems that seem to have materialized so quickly? AS YOU KNOW FROM interviews with former Chancellor Scott, one of the strategies we’ve used has been to look at the sources of revenue for the commonwealth over time. By doing that for six-year blocks over the last 30 or 40 years, we could plot the growth of state revenues and see as well the growth in university revenues. And by percentage of growth, university revenues were always growing more slowly than revenue growth in the state – until the last six-year period, 1995-2001. Over that period, revenues from the state to the university were at the same rate of growth as state revenues themselves. Which was terrific, which was wonderful – and it’s important to note, because it can be lost in all of this. For the first time in nearly 40 years, the university’s revenues increased at the same rate as the revenues of the state. At the same time, looking into the future, we could see that, by all of the indicators we typically use, for the next six-year period revenues were going to be declining. There was of course no way of knowing that they would be declining as precipitously as they have – the world really did change September 11. Still, in planning for the current fiscal year, which is to say FY02, we knew we would not be growing at the same rate. Over the last several years, we’d been charting a moderate growth of 4 percent; for FY02, we adjusted the parameters for growth in the budget first to 3 percent, then down to1 percent. Then, as you know, the FY02 budget did not come until nearly the middle of the fiscal year. We had to proceed on the basis of the budget we had planned, which was approved for spending on a month-by-month basis – at the same time becoming more cautious as indicators continued to show a more precipitous decline. When we finally did get the budget in late November, not only did we not get an allocation that would have represented a steady state budget – not even reflecting inflationary increases – but the impact for this campus was a $15 million base budget cut that we needed to deal with in the middle of a fiscal year. Now the campus’s budget has lots of different parts to it, but I want to focus on what we call the operating base – the money we can actually spend that’s not encumbered in special ways, such as debt service, for example. Our operating base in that regard, the reducible base, is about $245 million. And we had to cut 15 million from that base. Now, nearly 80 percent of that operating base budget is in people. Salaries. So that carries with it, you see, the sense that, if you have to make choices, you’re going to have to make them with people. Obviously, what needed to be undertaken, at a faster pace than was already happening, was data gathering – the review of everything that we do. We had already started this back in late summer, but when the budget came in, we knew we had to move much faster. Because at the time we would normally have been preparing for the ‘03 budget, the one that starts this July, we had to scramble to deal with a $15 million cut to the budget of the current fiscal year. Then in January, when the governor exercised her emergency powers again to address further declines in the current fiscal year, the university’s budget was cut another 3.5 million to the system, which translated to $1.7 million for this campus. So we were dealing $16.7 million dollars in cuts in the current fiscal year. January 18, as you know, was that terrible Friday when we had to announce the 95 layoffs that we did. The closing of three programs was also mentioned at that time. But I also needed to be very clear to everyone that was the beginning of the things that had to happen over time, and that we couldn’t wait until all the reviews were done. One source of distress is the feeling that the cuts are “random.” Could you say more about the basis for them, the process? THAT'S A GOOD POINT. When you have multiple streams of planning, you often have to keep reminding yourself as well as others that it is not a linear process. Of the various streams that are in process, some are at the system level, some at the campus level, some at the school and college and even the department and unit level – and none of these started at the same time. An example is the system-wide initiative that’s getting underway now. There are two committees being talked about at this stage, with two chancellors chairing each. One comittee has to do with admininstrative systems, the other has to do with academic programs, across the entire system. Jo Ann Gora (UMass Boston) and I are chairing the latter and Jean McCormick (UMass Boston) and Bill Hogan (UMass Lowell) are chairing the former. Now it’s in early stages, but the intent is to look across the system to determine whether there are efficiencies that can be captured in some programs. An example, where there is one already, is the marine science program that’s in its infant stages of being carried out, system-wide. Then on the campuses, and this one in particular, there are other processes going on. In academic affairs, the provost has formed a steering committee with the charge of looking at the array of academic programs and trying to get a sense of which ones may benefit greatly from further investment and which would not. Of course, one could argue that if you invest enough in anything it will make a difference, but the idea is to try to look at our strengths – where the grants have come in, where the awards are, where faculties are in forefronts and crossroads of their disciplines and so forth. At the same time, there’s a series of audits of all other functions on the campus – all functions outside of teaching and research – in terms of which functions are more critical and which are not as critical. So that by May, as information comes to me, I, with whatever team or teams I need to be part of the process, will be having conversations with whatever governance bodies need to be involved. And I will need ultimately to make decisions about all of these data and all of these commentaries that I will have heard at that point, regarding academic support programs. The provost at about the same time – May-June – will be hearing from the steering committee charged to look at academic programs. So there will be a convergence, if you will, in May and June of this year, at which we will have more data than we’ve probably ever had at once. And the commentary attached to it will allow the decisions that will have to be made to be made better. Now ultimately, it’s about priorities. Everything that we do on this campus I would hope is connected with our mission, and is good. I don’t want to hear we have chosen in an ad hoc way to continue things that are either not connected with our mission or that we deem to be not good. But ultimately, among those good, mission-related things, we need to prioritize. As we look forwardto the ‘03 budget year, things in the state continue to look much less favorable than we would want them to look. So we are trying to make decisions of the sort that have us positioned to continue to be very good at whatever it is we do. So the decisions already made close the gap for this year – but more will be required for the future? THAT IS CORRECT, and I’ve tried to say that from the beginning. There’s always the question: Why can’t we just have a planning process that has an end date, and then begin to make decisions? But the reality of what has happened to us in this budget year has disallowed that option. The budget came almost six months late, and with a base cut requiring that immediate decisions be made with as much information as we could muster. Now because we had been planning heretofore, we could benefit from that. We had reams of unit plans and budget request commentary from individual executive areas from previous years. So decisions that needed to made earlier could be made based on those data. But it’s a challenging process, and as I say it’s not linear – because it’s operating at the unit level, the campus level, the system level, and it’s at the same time for the instructional, research, and outreach dimensions of the university and for the support functions. Because it’s all moving at once, it’s understandable that it may appear random. But if you stand back far enough to get a broad enough view, the patterns emerge. Adding to the distress is the sense of helplessness. What can we as alumni, as faculty and staff and students, do to help? THIS IS ONE OF MANY TIMES that the citizenry of the commonwealth, as well as those on campus, have needed to be supportive – recognizing the situation the state is in at the moment, but also recognizing what is at risk if this university isn’t treated as the investment that we know it to be. When I look back at the annual reports of the presidents and chancellors of this campus, going back to the 1860s, I find this theme – that the quality of this institution was never an issue, but that money to provide and support and sustain that quality, and to grow that quality, was often a challenge. In an 1881 report that I was reading, Levi Stockbridge was discussing mobilizing the citizenry to be aware of the risks involved if the institution didn’t receive the funding it needed to move forward. Stockbridge understood that advocacy for legislative support was an appropriate strategy, because what that necessarily entails is accountability. Are we delivering on the mission we’ve been charged with? If we are, the citizenry will speak for us. What all of us have make clear is our value: that we are part of the solution to the commonwealth’s problems. Our students – 75 percent or so of them – come from Massachusetts, and in almost as large a percentage, they stay and contribute to Massachusetts. So this is one of many times over the years since 1863 that the campus and its consistituents have needed to advocate for it, to point out our contribution to the tax base and the intellectual base for the commonwealth. And to do so not in a threatening or an adversarial way, but in a way that is responsible, to inform legislators who change over time. Looking back over the reports of my predecessors, I see in us this rhythm, this pulse, that has been sustained regardless of the ebb and flow in the state. We never gave up, we never succumbed; we never did. And I would like to think we never will.

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NEVER GIVE UP

BUDGET IMPACTS

NEW CHANCELLOR ANNOUNCED

PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL APPEAL

TO BOSTON, WITH FLOWERS

UMASS DAY

E-WISH YOU WERE HERE

UP-TO-THE-MINUTEMAN

IT'S A MICROORGANISM'S LIFE -

SNAPSHOT: FREEZE FRAME

CHANCELLOR WILLIAMS: LARGER IMAGE

WE HAVE A WINNER: LARGER IMAGE

UP-TO-THE-MINUTEMAN: LARGER IMAGE

HIGHLIGHTS: "Gone when we got there" / Dept. of distinctions / Hail and Farewell

LARGER IMAGE: Snapshot