By Jeff Victor
Laramie Boomerang
Via Wyoming News Exchange
LARAMIE — As the University of Wyoming Board of Trustees voted to approve its fiscal year 2018 budget in June — the result of two consecutive years of budget cuts totaling $42 million — it simultaneously voted to gather nearly $140 million from across campus into a series of centralized reserves.
The move consolidated hundreds of reserves held at the division, college and department level. President Laurie Nichols and Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Kate Miller fought the initial sweep, arguing that without a clear process for requesting these funds, the move would damage trust between the administration and faculty, some of whom rely on these reserve accounts to conduct research.
As the board prepares to vote on the fiscal year 2019 budget during its upcoming June meeting, some faculty feel the issue of the swept reserves has not been adequately resolved.
Opening a discussion at the board’s budget committee meeting Tuesday, Faculty Senate Chair Donal O’Toole said it was unclear how faculty could regain funds vital to their department.
“I’m hearing from some heads that when the sweep was done, it was damaging to the functionality of their operation,” he said. “They have sent me some details, but I don’t know what to do with that information.”
Trustees and administrators responded by explaining a procedure already existed for requesting the return of swept funds.
“There is a process in place whereby — if departments or programs or colleges are struggling because they don’t have access to funds that were swept last year — they can request them,” Nichols said. “They have to follow the chain of command. It has to come from their department, up to the dean, to the provost and then ultimately to me.”
She added this has already taken place in some instances, such as in May when the board voted to return $500,000 of swept funds to ASUW, the university’s student government.
“Almost every single month that the budget committee has met, we have brought requests forward,” she said. “In fact, I can hardly think of one meeting where we haven’t had at least one request in front of them to restore funding where it was really needed.”
Board Treasurer and Committee Chair John McKinley said the same, adding members of the UW community who felt reserves were improperly swept are welcome to make their case.
“Those funds have not been spent,” McKinley said. “They are sitting there and to the extent transfers need to be made for reversal entries — we’ve addressed those on an ongoing basis.
I would encourage those people to go through the process. I think it has worked efficiently and well.”
Trustee Dave Bostrom added it was important to stick to the procedure already in place.
“If we don’t follow our own process … the floodgates are open,” he said. “The process is there for them to follow and they need to follow it.”
But O’Toole said the process had not been clearly communicated to the faculty at large.
“My understanding — from some department heads, who are reaching out to me more or less in desperation — is sometimes they have put in a request, an appeal, and they heard nothing,” he said.
Jon Pikal, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, said he saw his department’s graduate assistantship reserve swept — and was under the impression it would not be accessible.
“For the little people who had $20,000-30,000 set aside to fund a graduate student between grants and whatever — and the money was from federal sources — this money disappeared,” Pikal said. “We don’t know how to get it back. There’s lots of us out there, but we were told it was basically a waste of time and don’t bother — that’s why you haven’t been hearing these.”
Trustees and administrators alike conceded that there were miscommunications between the board, UW leadership and faculty about the reserves issue.
“We can maybe all agree that there was a communication breakdown,” said David Jewell, associate vice president for financial affairs. “Hopefully now, for those colleges that were not made aware of that process, they will be more fully aware. But I can say those instances where that exact process was followed, it did work well.”
McKinley added that not all requests for the return of funds would be granted
“It’s a work in progress but we’re trying to get a handle on it and properly get those funds put to use for UW going forward,” he said. “With the new system going forward, these are public funds, these are UW funds used for the overall benefit of the University of Wyoming going forward. I have some difficulty when they’re saying, ‘They’re my funds, they’re my funds, they’re my funds.’”
There is a difference between a faculty member asking for the money because they want it back with their own department and asking for the money for some specific purpose, Nichols said.
“When we ask, ‘What do you need it for?’ and there is no answer — that’s not a good response,” she said. “We really want to hear from you when you have a plan for your money.”
Of the roughly $140 million swept into centralized reserve accounts in June, the board has voted to return about $25 million to various entities that have requested the funds through the process detailed by administrators during the Tuesday meeting.