Struggling over how to deal with budget cuts proposed Jan. 22 by Gov. Scott McCallum, UW System administrators met last week to delineate options for absorbing the cutbacks, suggesting possibilities such as extending winter break to save on energy costs.
The ideas produced by the meetings are all very preliminary, said UW System President Katharine Lyall. Officials will not make the final decisions regarding exactly how they will dole out the budget reductions until early March, after the state legislature passes an amended budget.
A \somber"" mood characterized the meetings, according to UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley, who was also present.
According to McCallum's Budget Reform Act of 2002, the UW System is required to cut $50.5 million within the next two years as a result of Wisconsin's $1.1 billion budget deficit.
Other options discussed included strictly enforcing enrollment caps at UW System institutions, Lyall said. Every year, each school is given a total number of students it is allowed to admit, but often, that number is surpassed.
Also, to avoid potential layoffs, Lyall said an idea was to keep certain staff positions that are in need of filling vacant.
""There's all kind of things like that we're looking at as ways that we could handle this,"" she said.
UW System administrators are also working with state legislators to create a plan that is most beneficial to everyone.
""It isn't just John Wiley, John Torphy, Board of Regents, Katharine Lyall making the decisions,"" said John Torphy, UW-Madison vice chancellor for administration. ""As well, the legislature is involved in this and we need to chat with them and talk with them about their priorities.""
Mike Brown, a spokesperson for state Senate Majority Leader Chuck Chvala, D-Madison, said the size of the cuts proposed for the UW System was a reason for concern.
""Before you ask the question, 'How do we propose UW-Madison should handle these cuts,' the senator's position is, 'Should we even be talking about that at all?'"" Brown said.
Torphy said the magnitude of the cuts to certain university programs will depend on a set of policy decisions made by state politicians as to how much UW-Madison administrators can ""cut into the base resources.""
The question is, he said, whether the legislature ""will give us some more flexibility in terms of where we might have some savings, if we have the authority to do some things that are mandated now that we'd prefer not to do.""
Lyall said it was important for students to be patient during this process, which, she said, is a ""significant challenge.""
""I think there's a sense of frustration that these kind of decisions always seem to hit the university in the middle of the academic year,"" Lyall said. ""The cuts ... are not related to any problems inside the university but basically to problems in other parts of state government in managing the budget.\
