Collegiate Times

Peter Velz/Collegiate Times

Many of Virginia’s public colleges and universities paid a steep price to allow their employees to report to work as usual on Friday, May 28.

Statewide, 13 institutions absorbed a total loss of more than $8.8 million of money that would have come from the federal government Friday by independently declining to participate in a state-mandated furlough day of unpaid leave.

Instead of allowing employees to stay at home and lose a day’s pay, Virginia Tech, along with the University of Virginia, the Virginia Commonwealth University, George Mason University, James Madison University, the College of William and Mary, Radford University, Christopher Newport University, the University of Mary Washington, Longwood University, the Virginia Military Institute, and the 23 colleges governed by the Virginia Community College System, paid the daily wages of their full-time employees from non-government funds.

“Technically, we elected to pay employees that day out of our funds rather than funds that normally come from the government,” Tech spokesman Mark Owczarski said. “We didn’t accept about $1.3 million from the state.”

Owczarski said he did not consider the move to be a “buying out” of the state furlough day, as many have termed it. Rather, he said Tech simply found funds from “dozens of sources” within the preexisting budget to cover the cost of paying about 7,000 full-time employees for a day’s work.

“We wanted to stand by and support our employees,” he said.

Owczarski said the $1.3 million came from a variety of areas within Tech’s roughly $1 billion annual budget. “There were contingency funds in the existing budget,” he said, “… (and) savings through the year.”

“When you’re an organization the size we are, you build in,” those extra savings, he said.

Other schools, like VMI, which only absorbed $100,000 in costs, and George Mason, which absorbed $902,196, had specific sums of money available in the event of a situation like the furlough day.

Stewart MacInnis, VMI’s communications and marketing director, said his college’s Board of Visitors “had been saving money through tightening the belt,” and felt that spending that extra money to support employees was the right thing to do.

“The fact that employees haven’t seen a raise since 2007 … the BOV felt like this was something they could do,” MacInnis said. He said VMI felt asking employees to observe the unpaid furlough day “would be a
penalty.”

And Christine LaPaille, vice president of university relations at George Mason, said the university “anticipated budget cuts” when creating its annual budget.

“We had a reserve,” she said. She said that reserve of money “would have been assigned to one-time projects.”

“We felt it made sense for us to do this at this time,” she said.

According to LaPaille, George Mason, like many other schools, chose to absorb the cost of the furlough day as a way to give back to its employees.

“It was more about the families who it would have affected,” than the cost of paying the 3,100 full-time workers that would have been affected, she said.

Don Egle, university spokesman for JMU, said the Harrisonburg school, like many others, felt absorbing the $541,697 of its furlough day “was the best choice.”

“We were able to identify other institutional savings,” Egle said, that allowed to university to foot the bill.

Jeffrey Kraus, the assistant vice chancellor of public relations for the Virginia Community College System, said VCCS, which absorbed a total of $1.7 million spread between 23 community colleges in the state, has been looking for ways to save money for years because of state budget cuts.

“Cost-cutting is the name of the game,” Kraus said. He said VCCS has been hit with “about $64 million of state budget cuts” in recent years, while simultaneously experiencing “record enrollment” levels at its colleges across the state.
Kraus said the VCCS board of visitors decided to go ahead and absorb the $1.7 million because “it would disrupt our mission.”

“It was a tip of the hat to our hard-working employees,” he said.

Owczarski said Tech has also worked over the years to fundraise and identify other sources of revenue as the state has cut funding to higher education almost annually.

He said the issue of decreased state funding and programs like Friday’s furlough day would be considered in the next Board of Visitors meeting. On Monday, June 7, Tech’s BOV will meet to decide on the university’s operating budget for the 2010-2011 school year.

Owczarski said when considering the budget, the BOV would look to “protect ourselves from future what-ifs.”

The board will meet on Monday only. The full board will meet in an open session in the Torgersen Hall boardroom at 1:15 p.m.

A version of this article appeared in the Jun 3 issue of the Collegiate Times.