University Times

The University Senate budget policies committee (BPC) met briefly in public May 20 before closing the meeting to discuss University fiscal year 2012 budget matters.

Following the meeting, BPC chair John J. Baker said the committee reviewed the University Planning and Budgeting Committee’s (UPBC) budget recommendation to the chancellor.

Baker told the University Times that BPC “believes the UPBC budget recommendations to the chancellor for FY12 were appropriate and well conceived given the uncertain status of Pitt’s state appropriation for FY12 and the potential of cuts to it ranging anywhere from 15 to 50 percent,” adding, “Little can be said or planned accurately until the state legislature passes its appropriation budget for Pitt for next year.”

As part of the University’s annual planning and budgeting cycle, UPBC (which includes administrators as well as faculty, staff and student representatives) forwards budget parameters and salary pool increase recommendations to the chancellor. While BPC may agree with the UPBC recommendation, it also may choose to make a separate recommendation to the chancellor, who takes the input into consideration as he prepares a budget proposal to present to the Board of Trustees for approval.

The substance of those recommendations is not revealed until after a University budget is approved.

(An outline of Pitt’s planning and budgeting process is at www.academic.pitt.edu/pb/.)

Historically, the University delays approving its budget until state legislators finalize Pitt’s state appropriation during their own budgeting process.

The House of Representatives on May 24 approved a Republican budget proposal that would cut Pitt’s appropriation 25 percent (See May 12 University Times), a less severe reduction than the governor’s budget proposed.

State leaders aim to pass a budget by July 1, a deadline that had not been met during the Rendell administration.

In other BPC business, the committee:

• Accepted nominations for officers for the upcoming academic year. Baker was nominated as chair and Beverly Gaddy as co-chair. No nominees for secretary were presented.

Baker said he would ask the Senate office staff to poll voting members for additional nominations.

• Baker announced that the annual peer group analysis of average salaries of faculty and librarians is expected to be presented at BPC’s June meeting. The report compares Pittsburgh campus salaries with a peer group of faculty and librarians at public Association of American Universities institutions and compares salaries at Pitt’s Carnegie category II-B (undergraduate baccalaureate-level) Bradford, Greensburg and Johnstown campuses with a peer group from similar campuses at institutions in the American Association of University Professors Middle Atlantic, East North Central and South Atlantic regions. (For the most recent report, see the June 10, 2010, University Times.)

—Kimberly K. Barlow