The University Senate passed the first budget under its new allocation system March 22. The budget adds on to the partial set of recommendations passed in January, which included a tuition increase of 5.9 percent.

The new system, called the Responsibility Center Management system, allows individual schools, colleges and other units that are allocated money, to have more input in how to spend what they are given, said Gerald Mager, the chair of the Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal Affairs.

If a unit on campus wanted to change something in its budget in the past, it would have had to go through the central administration, Mager said. Now, the responsibility falls on the individual unit’s shoulders.

‘This allows a lot more opportunities to be quick and self-determining in these matters,’ Mager said. ‘That’s big for us.’

The new process calls for units to appear before the RCM committee and present their individual budget proposals and academic initiatives, Mager said. The committee then weighs the proposals through a screening process to decide which proposals are to be given highest priority.

Because of its unique nature, the system must be introduced gradually, Mager said. Deans, department chairs and central administrators must learn it before it can be completely successful.

Next year’s budget is very similar to this year’s, but a lot of the added tuition dollars will be put toward heating and power costs and health care for university employees, Mager said.

Faculty and staff health care costs rose 11 percent since last year, according to the budget committee’s report.

‘There’s more money to deal with, but it gets used quickly,’ Mager said. ‘Even the health center’s costs are increasing.’

Next year, the RCM will work to better streamline its process, which caused delays in formulating the 2006-2007 budget, Mager said.

‘Having a year under our belts will give us the opportunity to go into next year’s process a little more educated and a lot more efficient,’ Mager said.

Despite the obvious importance of the budget, Mager said he reminded his fellow senators why they go through the process.

‘There is opportunity to derive the misperception that the budget is the only big thing at this university,’ Mager said. ‘But the budget is only a tool for a larger purpose.’

Published on April 5, 2006 at 12:00 pm