UNM runs on a ‘skeleton crew’

Have you noticed UNM classrooms and public spaces are slightly dirtier than usual?

I have.

It hit me while sneaking behind some cabinets to catch a phone call in the library. Our school isn’t being maintained the way it was just a year ago. There was a thick film of dust on those cabinets — the kind that begs for someone to write, “Clean me.”

There’s a reason that UNM public spaces look unkempt: In the past two years, the Physical Plant Department (PPD) lost 69 positions to attrition. That’s 69 mostly low-paid custodial positions.

To further explain what’s going on, I need to go back two years when the regents instigated a UNM-wide hiring freeze to stave off a projected budget shortfall because of the recession.

The freeze required the administration to approve filling vacated positions. That freeze trimmed UNM’s faculty, staff and other resources to the bone. UNM is running on a skeleton crew.

Imagine being an out-of-state prospective student calling the registrar’s office. The phone continues to ring, but you’re never transferred to voice mail. This could happen because Student Services, a showcase office in the south complex, has cut its staff to bare minimum and discontinued voice mail as a cost-cutting measure.

“We’re trying to do more with less,” said Merle Kennedy, UNM Staff Council President and a manager in the registrar’s office. He said that services to students aren’t suffering while admitting that record-high enrollment combined with lowered staffing levels and fewer professors means larger classes and fewer staff providing services to more students.

UNM Faculty Senate President Richard Wood said that UNM is down 12 faculty positions from a year ago. Including proposed reductions, the cumulative funding cuts UNM gets from the state add up to 20 percent. He said that a $9 million cut is on the table and reminded me that $5.6 million was cut last fall. He doesn’t think services to students have suffered to date, but believes more cuts will cause them to.

As with most governmental agencies, the majority of UNM’s operating expenses are wages. These series of cuts mean more people will lose their jobs. This either means fewer people providing the same services or fewer services.

If the past two years are indicators of the future, we know that the lower an employee is on the human resources food chain, the easier it is to cut that position. This means vice presidents, department directors and other highly paid administrator positions are relatively safe while custodians, office assistants and highly skilled graduate student employees are fungible. We’ve already seen this in how graduate assistant positions were the first on the chopping block and in the 69 PPD positions that have disappeared.

The question isn’t: How much more cutting can UNM afford before its mission to educate New Mexicans is compromised? I believe we passed that milestone last fall. The real question is: Why have our leaders led us down this path?

The Roundhouse group-think is stuck on “cut the budget to the bone” — but that kind of anorexic thinking is now cutting vital services in the quest of closing a $200 million budget gap.

But cost-cutting only addresses one side of the ledger.

In an editorial published in Sunday’s Albuquerque Journal, Sen. Tim Keller (D- Albuquerque) writes: “Tax expenditures, the tax subsidies, incentives, exemptions and deductions are all forms for tax carve-outs for various industries, special interests and population segments.

Together all 107 of these make up an estimated $1 billion in annual taxes we choose not to collect each year.” In other words, close the tax loopholes that have been bleeding potential state revenues.

Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino (D-Albuquerque) has another idea. He proposes the state borrow from the State Permanent Fund to offset the projected shortfall and pay it back, with interest, from future revenues — presumably when the economy gets better.

Of course, the Legislature could also bring tax rates back to pre-2003 levels when those making $100,000 were taxed at a slightly higher rate than the rest of us.

The DFA estimates this would increase revenues by half a billion dollars per year.

UNM, like the rest of New Mexico governments, has been trimmed as much as possible. Further cuts will only reduce services beyond functionality. It’s time for the Legislature to consider the revenue side of the equation.