UFF-USF

At yesterday’s collective-bargaining session between USF’s administration and the Police Benevolent Association, the administration proposed one-time cash bonuses this year (beyond the legislative mandate) that would be tied to disciplinary records. This isn’t a bonus on top of some base increase but the vast majority of whatever university police could receive.

I’m sure that the administration wants to impose this condition to rationalize, incentivize, or at least jargonize supervision of university police. But the no-reprimand condition on the main chunk of money in the first year of the contract would have unintended consequences. My understanding is that a significant proportion of mild reprimands come when members of a police force exercise their discretion in a situation where their supervisor disagrees with the judgment of the officer on the ground. If the person has met the standards for the department with mild reprimands, then there are two fundamental problems:

• If the person is on the force with reprimands that prevent a raise — and denying a raise is a significant punishment for behavior — then the university is saying that they’re keeping substandard people on the force merely because they can fog a mirror.
• If a police officer knows that using her or his discretion is the greatest risk to a raise, then there will be no discretion used. If you’re going 3 mph over the campus speed limit, you get a ticket. If there’s any doubt about what happened in a dormitory argument, the police officer will have a significant incentive to intervene instead of trying education and conflict management.

UFF doesn’t represent police; PBA is a separate union, but we have to watch what happens with our fellow unions, and sometimes attempts to “rationalize” are simply irrational.

While the legislature agreed on a second property-tax-cut deal, the signals (see the article) are that the Florida Education Association will oppose the proposal. Though it will not directly affect education, the rhetoric around property taxes assumes that we can have a free lunch in Florida. If we want a state economy that relies on more than tourism and agriculture and that provides equal opportunities for all, we have to spend money. The state cannot go into a deficit, and in the past decade the state has put a greater burden for education funding onto local property taxes. So the money has to come from somewhere. While I’d love to see the distribution of funding shift back towards the state, I fear that slashing local tax revenues will put a greater burden on the state at a time of significant economic weaknesses.

And there is already the need at the state level to invest more in education… or, as the St. Pete Times editorial put it today, we have tough choices for higher education (and all education).

Governments need to be frugal, and I am not going to defend irresponsible spending. Personally, I agree with those who think higher education is a cheap date. But other services cost money, and the reason why spending has risen at the local level in recent years is partly because spending in Florida was depressed for so long. We don’t know what the effects of the proposed tax cuts will be, and I am skeptical that it is wise policy. To pretend that eviscerating the tax base is good governance is not fiscal responsibility.

Update:  According to analysts at the Florida Education Association, the proposal that will be on the ballot in late January will take almost $3 billion from K-12 school funding over 5 years.

If the governor approves a 5% undergraduate-tuition hike as part of the state’s budget reconciliation process, that will help the state’s higher-education picture in some small measure. For a variety of reasons, this cannot be the primary base of funding support at USF:

1. Currently, tuition is a fraction of the total costs of undergraduate education. A 10% tuition hike gives USF less than a 3% increase in related revenues. (The differential tuition bill signed by the governor in the spring will matter more, simply because of the significant differential approved.)
2. USF’s enrollment profile has been shifting away from undergraduate enrollment and towards graduate enrollment. Raising undergraduate tuition matters the least for institutions with a high proportion of graduate students.

The reality is that higher education funding must be diversified. Higher tuition is part of the picture (with considerable attention to financial aid and addressing student debt), but tuition cannot be the entire picture.

The faculty senate has postponed a discussion of a working paper on the role of community engagement in tenure and promotion. The Collective Bargaining Agreement has provisions for addressing changes in tenure and promotion guidelines, especially sensitivity towards changes in the middle of tenure-track years.

The FEA government relations staff are estimating that the mid-year cuts approved by the legislature amount to approximately 2.5% of general revenues. The cut to the base was 3.6%, but nonrecurring funds were added back.

These cuts are not good, but they are better than the governor’s early-September proposal of 6.2% cuts to higher-education  general revenues.

At its fall meeting over the weekend, the United Faculty of Florida statewide Senate approved a position that the next state budget should include a raise to the base for all state and university employees. This year, the state legislature provided for a $1000 bonus to state and university employees, and each chapter in the state will be negotiating for more; the United Faculty of Florida will be arguing that given the high turnover among faculty in Florida, university employees need a raise to the salary base.

Longtime higher-education union organizer Israel Kugler died October 1 in Maryland from pneumonia. More information is available from the New York Times obituary.

In its fall meeting over the weekend, the United Faculty of Florida statewide Senate reaffirmed its position that public support for higher education should be in the top quartile when compared to other states in the country.  If one includes state and local public revenues in 2003-04 (the latest year for which national data is available), Florida was currently 36th (out of 51) in public support per fall student. If one also includes tuition, Florida was 50th (out of 51st).

Political action chair Roy Weatherford notes that there’s an easy way to send e-mails to your legislators about the budget situation: Florida Education Association’s Action Alert for the budget will ask you for some information and will let you rewrite the template language. What is most important is to change the subject line to mention higher education, since legislative offices track subject lines more than body text.

[The following is from statewide United Faculty of Florida President Tom Auxter:]

UFF Members

It is critical that we contact legislators now — by email or by phoning their local district offices — to make sure they understand that their constituents do not want more damage done to Florida higher education through the process of budget cuts. (You may have heard that the Governor is recommending a 6.2% cut for universities and a 4.5% cut for community colleges.) Emphasize that these cuts hurt students and deprive them of the education they expected when they enrolled.

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