OU officials say state cuts could have been much worse
By Nick Claussen
September 11, 2008
Ohio University received an $845,000 cut in state funding on Wednesday as part of Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland’s budget reductions, but university officials expressed gratitude that the cut was no worse than that.
On Wednesday, Strickland ordered $540 million in budget adjustments for the state. Those cuts included a 4.75 percent across-the-board reduction for state agencies, except for a few that were held harmless.
McDavis explained during a press conference Wednesday afternoon that the state did not cut the two major sources of funding for higher education, but instead slashed several line items that provide smaller sources of funding to the university.
Funds for special programs in areas such as the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine (OU-COM) and the Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs received the reductions, McDavis explained.
“It could have been obviously much worse,” McDavis said.
Bill Decatur, senior vice president for finance and administration, said that the university receives a total of more than $100 million in state funding for the Athens campus alone, and more than $135 million in state funding for all of the campuses. If all of the state funding for higher education had received the 4.75 percent cut, it would have meant a cut of nearly $5 million for the Athens campus, and a total reduction of more than $6 million for the entire university.
In addition to the state funding, the university receives funding from tuition and other sources, and has a total budget of $605 million, Decatur said.
OU officials plan to meet this week with the university’s Budget Planning Council to discuss how to make the cuts and to discuss a contingency budget plan for the 2009-2010 budget year, according to McDavis.
The $845,000 cut probably will not result in any layoffs or job losses, but McDavis said he does not know yet how the cuts will be made. He added that he will meet with officials from the Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs and OU-COM to discuss the areas that received funding reductions.
No academic programs will suffer funding cuts, he said
Earlier this year, McDavis and other administration officials put together a contingency budget that planned for budget cuts such as this one. McDavis said the university has been monitoring the state budget situation carefully, and knew cuts could be coming.
The contingency budget would have delayed raises for faculty and staff and made other savings, and would have allowed for a $10 million budget reduction from the state.
That contingency budget was rejected by the OU Board of Trustees, though, who said they did not want to delay the raises to faculty and staff. Those raises were granted, along with a raise of $85,000 to McDavis.
The president said Wednesday that the university needs to start making contingency plans now for the budget to be approved next summer, as further reductions in state funding could be coming.
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