As the budget crisis throws University finances into sharp focus, some legislators are seeking savings through administrator salaries.State Sen. Troy Hebert has introduced legislation to revert all administrative salaries in public higher education to their level at the beginning of the 2008 calendar year. “We are cutting into the meat now where programs and classes are going to be cut,” Hebert said. “The teaching staff are going to be cut also, but we have hundreds of administrative personnel [statewide] that make $100,000 per year.”Senate Bill 329 — authored by Hebert — would affect administrators who are not involved in teaching and are paid by state appropriations.The bill is scheduled to be debated in the Senate Education Committee.”Instead of us cutting the professors and teachers in the classroom, we need to cut those individuals that are making $100,000-plus that are non-instructional,” Hebert said.Similar bills that seek to limit salary increases at state agencies during a budget deficit will be debated later in the session.Hebert said this measure may not save education from the budget crisis, but he argued it will maintain a principle.”I am not going to sit back and allow the people who teach everyday in the classrooms and have the kids trying to learn face these budget cuts when we have these individuals that are getting these pay raises that are ludicrous,” Hebert said.Hebert attempted to enact similar a law last year but only received six votes in favor.”While the professors and students were in the classroom teaching and learning, the administrative personnel were at the capital lobbying against the amendment,” Hebert said. “That’s exactly why [it failed].University Executive Vice Chancellor on Legislative and External Affairs Jason Droddy said the bill could be dangerous because it would blindly revert salaries with no regard for the purpose of the increase.Reverting salaries could lead to high-quality administrators being poached by other schools, Droddy said.The University’s Baton Rouge campus has doled out several pay increases to high level administrators for multiple reasons in the past six months.Most of these increases are the results of increased duties. The University has lost a number of high level administrators over the past year and chose not to replace them, but to give their duties to remaining administrators.Eric Monday took over services as interim vice chancellor of Finance and Administrative Services in January bringing a $69,513 increase to his salary.University Spokesperson Kristine Calongne said Monday’s salary is less than the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, also known as CUPA-HR, average for his position.Competitive reasons are also the cause of some increases.In the case of Vice Provost for Equity, Diversity and Community Outreach Katrice Albert, the University approved a $25,000 pay raise to compete with an job offered to Albert elsewhere in the LSU System.Calongne said Albert’s salary is also below the CUPA-HR average.On the other side, educational faculty have not received any large scale merit or across the board pay increases since August 2008, according to Faculty Senate President Kevin Cope. “The faculty does not resent or begrudge anyone of a raise,” Cope said. “However, I think that we have to be uniform in our approach and realize that the faculty have achieved in many different ways.”With faculty not receiving merit raises and some faculty receiving letters of non-renewal, Cope said faculty are facing a similar situation Droddy said administrators could face. “Like it or not, the University is a national labor pool, and it is not the case that every school is in trouble,” Cope said. “If you can look out the window and see the next opportunity, you can be sure that there are many other states out there that are eager to select these faculty.”While the University has handed out about five pay raises from state funds over the past six months, administrators argue the University has a slim administration compared to other schools.”LSU has one of the leanest administrations of anybody by far,” Droddy said. “We have people doing two or three jobs that people would be doing at other universities.”The University ranks 31 among Southern Regional Education Board peers for number of administrative personnel according to U.S. Department of Education statistics.–Contact Xerxes A. Wilson at [email protected]