Final budget acceptable to UNC officials

After a budget season full of tough talk and dire warnings, UNC-system officials said lawmakers’ final budget proved generally supportive of higher education.

“We feel like we had a very good year,” Mark Fleming, UNC-system vice president for government relations, said Friday. “The legislative leadership treated the university very well.”

While the state’s 2005-07 budget does include a reduction in general funding for the state universities, those cuts are more than offset by gains in special program spending.

Each of the 16 system schools face a 1.72 percent cut in general program spending — a total loss of about $31 million systemwide.

But much of that will be offset by the more than $73 million in new funding that will be distributed across the system to accommodate enrollment growth, as well as additional state money that will support need-based scholarships.

Fleming estimates that, overall, the budget includes a 10 percent increase in authorized funding to benefit the system.

“We’re very pleased,” he said.

At UNC-Chapel Hill, a 1.72 percent drop in general state funding translates into a loss of about $6.3 million. A further reduction of more than $600,000 resulted from a decision by the legislature to end subsidies for summer school and some other receipt-funded activities.

Provost Robert Shelton said he has been meeting with deans and vice chancellors to determine where UNC-CH will have to cut back.

“There will be a lot of decisions coming down in the week ahead, and in the end we’ll have more good things to do than money to do it with,” he said.

While enrollment growth money will substantially reduce the impact of general cuts at many of the system’s fastest-growing campuses, UNC-CH has seen a relatively modest rate of expansion. The complicated distribution formula for the $73 million in growth funding from the state means it will receive a proportionally smaller share of the pot.

“If you have decided, as we have, that you want to have very slow growth, then that formula doesn’t help you as much,” Shelton said.

Among the campuses that will benefit most are the system’s seven focused-growth institutions. Those schools received an additional $3.75 million in new funding as part of the initiative to expand capacity at the state’s underutilized universities.

Chuck Wooten, vice chancellor for administration and finance at Western Carolina University, said the impact of the general funding cut will largely be offset.

“Overall, the budget to Western was quite favorable,” he said. “We had a substantial amount of enrollment growth, and that provided us with resources in excess of the cuts that were made.”

UNC-Wilmington and Appalachian State University, not among the seven focused-growth institutions, also received a specific earmark of about $8.4 million to bring their per-student spending levels closer to other system schools.

“Overall, UNC-W will come out of this session a much stronger institution,” said Mark Lanier, assistant to the chancellor.

With the UNC system already two months into the fiscal year, most schools hope to have their own budgets finalized within the next few weeks.

“I’m very pleased to have the budget,” Shelton said. “I would have been more pleased to have no cuts, but I’m pleased to finally have it.”

Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.