In a town hall session on Thursday, UNM President Bob Frank said the budget cuts and the recent decision to implement a hiring freeze will help cover the University’s shortages in the next fiscal year.
Main Campus will remain on a hiring freeze for six months and closely evaluate the need for all vacant noncritical positions within the University, Frank said in a recent University-wide e-mail.
Reserves are used when departments do not have enough revenue to cover their expenses and not all departments have reserves on hand, so it will not fix long-term budget issues, he said.
“Financial reserves only solve one-time problems, and this looks like a three-year problem,” Frank said.
Short term strategies include reviewing non-academic, part time and temporary positions for reorganization and consolidation, he said. A data-driven review of programs and services will determine who and what gets cut in an effort to save money.
University Provost Chaouki Abdallah said he has advised all college deans to reduce hiring faculty by 50 percent.
The original academic plan was to hire 20 new faculty members every year, and with this model the University will lose essential teaching staff, he said.
Frank said the University has tried to maintain its budget for the past three years but it isn’t enough and cuts will happen across all levels.
Executive Vice President David Harris said no one is exempt from cuts, and administrators are looking at top to bottom salaries to save money.
At the town hall, one faculty member pointed out there are over 300 employees who make $100,000 a year, and over 100 employees who have a salary of $200,000. If those salaries took a temporary five percent cut, the University would save $8 million in one year.
Other attendants called for upper level administrative staff to take salary cuts in order to save essential faculty and lower level staff.
These cuts are in addition to Gov. Susana Martinez advising state offices to cut spending by five percent, and Frank advised preparation for $14 million in reductions.
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“We need to make our University a little bit smaller, and implement discipline among ourselves,” Frank said.
For the fiscal year 2016, expenses outweighed revenues, leaving the University $617 million more in the red than the year before.
The upcoming year is expected to add an additional $458 million to the debt.
New Mexico saw a revenue reduction of $348 million for fiscal year 2016, leaving the state $131 million in debt. New Mexico is to see a $556 million revenue reduction for the fiscal year 2017.
The budget shortfall is due to decreased revenue in the oil and natural gas industry, the state’s main source of revenue. Other state revenue comes from federal funds.
Governor Susana Martinez has called a special legislative session to address the shortfalls.
New Mexico public universities are under review for downgrades, and Frank said this will make it more expensive for the University to borrow money to cover expenses.
Nikole McKibben is a news reporter at the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @nmckibben92.
