Even with talk of a lesser cut in the coming year, optimism is in short supply with the University administration.
With the state facing a $1.6 billion budget deficit, how much budgetary belt tightening the state budget will require is still up in the air, according to Chancellor Michael Martin and Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Jack Hamilton.
LSU System President John Lombardi raised eyebrows last week when it became clear that a 10-percent budget cut exercise was in the works. This is the third exercise in the past six months, and the 10-percent figure is substantially less than the 32-percent cut employed last semester.
“As we continue to attempt to address the budget prospects for the coming fiscal year, having gone through cut exercises up to 32 percent, it now has been suggested that the lower 10-percent target we last asked you to work on may be more severe than what the Executive Budget will require,” Lombardi said in a System news release last week.
Although Gov. Bobby Jindal confirmed through various news organizations his intentions of keeping the cuts to colleges at a minimum, Hamilton and Martin stressed the uncertainty left with these “random” exercises.
“I don’t think we are in a position to be optimistic or pessimistic right now,” Hamilton said. “I think the governor has talked about the cut possibly being lower than 10 percent, but it is not clear how he arrived at that figure and what assumptions he made.”
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Martin predicts what he labels as the “net cut” to be higher than 10 percent because of mandated costs forced upon the University.
“It is a proposal,” Martin said. “There will be a lot of negotiation. I think a lot of tribal rituals and dancing will take place before we know what the next fiscal year will look like.”
Jindal’s plans for cutting will require use of “one-time” funds, which presents a familiar political battle to be fought in the legislative session later this semester.
Further clarity will be achieved in March when Jindal releases his preliminary budget that will ultimately be debated, edited and passed by the Legislature.
While the exact cut to the state’s budget is still subject to debate, a 10-percent cut — requiring a $19.4 million cut from the Baton Rouge campus — would allow the University to avoid exigency that seemed inevitable if the University were to receive the larger cuts of previous exercises, according to Hamilton.
“If it is less than 10 percent, we may be able to get through this,” Hamilton said. “We can avoid it, but if you get north of 10 percent, the damage becomes worse and worse.”
Along with a smaller-than-discussed cut, the chancellor is also looking for more “flexibility” in things like bidding processes from the legislative session to operate the University more efficiently and mitigate the effects of any dip in funding.
Martin and Hamilton are also eagerly awaiting the fate of proposals made by the recently formed Flagship Coalition, which seeks to lessen the University’s dependence on fluctuating state funding.
“We don’t know what steps the political leaders in the state will take,” Hamilton said. “In the next couple of weeks we will know more, but we are not down to [a 10-percent cut] any more than we were up to a [32-percent cut].”
 
 
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Contact Xerxes A. Wilson at [email protected]