Chancellor shares update on UW System budget, employee issues

Chancellor Tom Harden distributed an email update Thursday to UW-Green Bay faculty and staff. Harden shared his impressions of talks earlier this week involving UW System leadership, chancellors and business officers regarding last week’s decision by the legislature’s Joint Finance Committee to assign the UW System a $189 million reduction in the 2013-15 biennial budget. The $189 million in reductions consists of a $127 million lapse over the two-year period, along with a $62 million ongoing base-budget reduction. Harden said UW System officials will seek to minimize the impact on individual institutions, particularly with respect to the $127 million one-time lapse. The reduction’s more permanent component — the base-budget cut over the biennium totaling $62 million, or about $30 million per year — will present UW-Green Bay with “difficult choices,” Harden said. Based on UW System history, a statewide base-budget cut of that magnitude would trim approximately $750,000 from UW-Green Bay’s GPR allocation. The Chancellor also shared word that the previously approved University Personnel Systems, an initiative granting UW System administrators more authority over personnel rules and pay-plan structure, is expected to be put on hold for two years. UW System employees will remain part of the general State of Wisconsin compensation system.