Rao reactivates budget advisory group

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University President Michael Rao has re-formed a budget advisory group
in response to a $900 million shortfall in state revenues that could
lead to cuts in higher education funding.

The Senior Staff Budget Advisory Group, first formed last year, will
restart its review of CMU’s budget in the coming weeks, said Provost
and Executive Vice President Thomas Storch.

Storch will chair the group with co-chairman George Ross, vice president of Finance and Administrative Services.

The SSBAG will work to prepare the university for budget cuts if CMU
is forced to make additional reductions at any time, Rao said in his
presidential update Wednesday.

“Economic recovery is on the way but is not happening as quickly in
Michigan as had been hoped,” Rao wrote. “The state budget will either
need an infusion of new revenue or budget cuts will come.”

Rao said the impact on higher education remains uncertain.

Knowing that higher education shares a significant portion of the
state’s general fund discretionary spending, Rao said there is a chance
that university funding will be affected.

Storch said SSBAG is formed by around 20 people, including the vice presidents, deans and financial officers at CMU.

“We will begin meeting in a week or so and begin looking at the
challenges of the state’s budget,” Storch said. “We don’t know what
type of reductions will be needed.”

Storch said last year’s budget process is being studied to see if there are better ways to go through the process.

He said the group’s first meeting will discuss how a review should be done.

“Initially we will be looking at how we may have to adjust the
budget at mid-year,” Storch said. “We may then look at steps we have to
take for the upcoming fiscal year.”

Kathy Wilbur, governmental relations and public affairs vice
president, said academics will take a hit if CMU continues to take cuts
in state funding.

She said students could see the elimination of entire programs, classes and sections offered at CMU.

Last year’s strategy of across-the-board cuts will not happen again if large cuts are made in the future, she said.

“When the cuts are that large, you don’t do across-the-board cuts anymore,” Wilbur said.

She said CMU has to evaluate every program and class in hopes of finding something else that can be eliminated.

“That’s when you begin to see how it impacts students,” she said.

David Waymire, executive vice president of Marketing Resource Group
in Lansing, said his group will continue to push legislators to make
higher education appropriations a priority as they prepare to cut the
budget because of the revenue shortfalls.

“We want the same priority placed on higher education as there is on the K-12 system,” he said.

Waymire’s firm is the public relations group representing the
Presidents’ Council, a group of presidents from each of the 15 public
Michigan universities.

He said last year’s budget cutting has helped the universities reassess their priorities.

Robert Kohrman, dean of the College of Science and Technology,
chaired SSBAG last year while acting as interim provost and executive
vice president.

“You try to get the input as best as you can from the community,” he said.

Kohrman said the group would have been improved last year if it
could have gotten legislators involved to give CMU a better feel of the
cuts that were coming.

Kohrman said the specifics of how the group will operate and when
they will meet still are being decided, but forming the group again was
“the appropriate thing to do.”

If state higher education funding is cut, Kohrman said the group
will have ideas in place when the time comes to make decisions on cuts
at CMU.

Storch said SSBAG is not going to be a permanent fixture at CMU.

“It’s just to get us through the difficult times the state is having,” he said.
Central Michigan Life reporter Chad Livengood contributed to this report.