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By Tom Jackson
tjackson@uga.edu
The University System and the University of Georgia emerged from the 2000 session of the Georgia General Assembly with a “steady state” budget as predicted. After several consecutive years as a front-burner issue in the state budget, higher education gave way this year to new emphasis on K-12 education, health-care coverage and rural economic development.
Fewer student credit-hours following the semester conversion translated directly into fewer dollars for the University System based on the resident-instruction funding formula. The fiscal year 2001 formula enrollment funding would have decreased $103.9 million had the governor and legislature not chosen to replace $47.4 million. President Michael F. Adams’s directive to hold back spending earlier this semester, combined with other steps at the system and state levels, are anticipated to make up the remainder of the shortfall over the next year. Additionally, the legislature provided $33 million to cover a serious shortfall in the University System’s health-insurance plan.
The appropriation bill includes a 3 percent merit pay-increase pool for University System personnel, but the effective date is Oct. 1, rather than the traditional July 1 for personnel not in resident instruction. Most discussion concerned the pay-raise implementation date, not the size of the raise, says Vice President for Government Relations Lawrence E. Weatherford. “Our local delegation worked hard on this matter,” he adds. “The members of the delegation certainly were aware of university employee concerns.”
No UGA projects were on the major and minor capital-construction list approved this year, but the capital budget does include $3.9 million to furnish the student learning center, slated for an early summer groundbreaking. The university had hoped to receive approval to build a parking deck in the northwest part of campus as a payback project, but will have to resubmit the project for consideration next year.
While it was not included in the governor’s budget recommendation, President Adams and Provost Karen Holbrook made presentations to legislative committees on the UGA biomedical initiative with the Medical College of Georgia. “We hope that, although the legislature was unable to fund the initiative this year, the framework has been built for success in the next budget cycle,” Weatherford says.
No major new UGA initiatives were funded for the coming year, but the legislature provided funding for several system-wide programs which benefit UGA, including the new Yamacraw economic-development program, which focuses on the computer-chip industry. Lawmakers also approved $1.46 million for the Georgia Learning Online for Business and Education technology program and a $375,000 Hispanic initiative.
Remediation of the university’s waste site off South Milledge Avenue is funded at $3.4 million, but no funds were added for the already-completed remediation of a waste site at the UGA plant sciences farm in Oconee County, which will be covered by a combination of system and institutional funds.
The Georgia Lottery provides $15 million to the equipment, technology and construction trust fund and $7 million to the Campus Electronic Crossroads project, or Venus, of which UGA receives $4 million. Another $4 million funds phase II of the Galileo interconnected library system, housed at UGA, with an additional $1.9 million in special initiatives funding for Galileo in 2001.
A new UGA eminent-scholar position in animal genomics is among five eminent-scholar positions approved under the Georgia Research Alliance budget of $29.4 million.
The “B” budget includes $2.1 million for agricultural research and extension, of which $1.03 million will fund 12 new positions in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and four in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences.
The public library system of Georgia with its $32.7 million budget transfers from the Department of Technical and Adult Education to the board of regents as part of the governor’s education-reform package. Operational responsibility for the new student tracking and accountability data system for K-12 is assigned to the State Data Center at Georgia Tech and funded at $50 million in the “B” budget.
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