University of Wyoming (UW) leaders have started work on a savings plan meant to comply with legislative demands. That plan could eventually identify courses to cut or positions to terminate.
UW had a largely successful legislative session earlier this year, clawing back more than $60 million that right-wing state lawmakers aimed to cut from the state university’s biannual budget.
But the budget as passed still included a footnote directing the university to find possible cuts and to bring that plan to lawmakers later this year.
UW Trustee Kermit Brown said that will involve making some “hard decisions.”
“I perceive this to be a fairly painful process,” he said. “The legislature has made it clear that they want to see some efficiencies that result in some real savings to the university, and not just something that’s illusory, where nobody loses their job and life goes on.”
Brown is one of several university leaders working to develop the savings plan. That working group had its first meeting Monday.
Trustee John McKinley reminded the group’s members that they actually have a wider mandate than just finding cuts.
“That’s not our mission,” he said. “Our mission is to identify organizational and operational efficiencies and opportunities. And in that, there may be areas where cost savings can be achieved, but the purpose of this group is not to identify cuts. It’s to identify those opportunities for streamlining and refocusing UW’s delivery of education.”
The group will formalize its guiding principles at the next meeting later this month. Those principles will attempt to succinctly explain the university’s purpose and guide any recommended cuts or revisions.
“We’re here to be a teaching institution, first and foremost,” said Rod Godby, a UW associate professor of economics. “We are here to serve the state. We have an undergraduate teaching mission. If everything else went away tomorrow, that’s the last thing we do, and that’s the core that we need to maintain. And then we build out from that.”
Why is this happening?
The state’s budget, which was passed earlier this year, outlines the $425 million the university will receive from the state government over the next two years. It also includes several footnotes restricting some of that spending.
Footnote 9 directs the university to produce a comprehensive review of its operations and identify ways to cut costs. The footnote used to be longer and used to call specifically for $5 million in savings. This provision was backed by the threat that the Legislature would take another $10 million off the university’s budget if it failed to identify $5 million in savings.
Gov. Mark Gordon vetoed that specific dollar amount and threat when he signed the budget in March. But he left the rest of the footnote, necessitating the work that UW started Monday.
The working group will meet twice a month from now through the fall, when UW is set to present the plan to the Legislature’s Joint Appropriations Committee.
