{"id":21522,"date":"2015-12-15T09:01:46","date_gmt":"2015-12-15T17:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/u-of-alaska-regents-prepare-for-budget-cuts\/"},"modified":"2015-12-15T09:01:46","modified_gmt":"2015-12-15T17:01:46","slug":"u-of-alaska-regents-prepare-for-budget-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/u-of-alaska-regents-prepare-for-budget-cuts\/","title":{"rendered":"U. of Alaska regents prepare for budget cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

FAIRBANKS<\/strong> \u2014 University of Alaska officials are working to prioritize programs as they face another round of cuts outlined in Gov. Bill Walker\u2019s budget plan.<\/p>\n

The statewide university system would receive about $330 million for fiscal year 2017 under Walker\u2019s plan released Wednesday, reported the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. The new figure would reduce university funding by more than $15.7 million, or 4.6 percent, from the previous year.<\/p>\n

Pat Pitney, Walker\u2019s budget director, told UA President Jim Johnsen and the board of regents about the \u201cbold\u201d plan that includes funding reductions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to demonstrate that we are efficient, but we also know that the size of reductions are going to impact programs. There\u2019s no way we can make the reductions that we\u2019ve made and expect that we can do everything we\u2019ve done in the past,\u201d Pitney said. \u201cSo it\u2019s going to be priority choices and significant change, coupled with the most we can get from doing business better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walker\u2019s plan does not include capital funding to complete the unfinished engineering building at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The university had requested $34.8 million to finish the work.<\/p>\n

Pitney said the overall state capital budget plan of $195 million was \u201cvery austere\u201d and \u201cconstrained.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe governor was not comfortable in putting money in for the engineering building this year,\u201d Pitney said. \u201cWe have proposed working with the Legislature on a general obligation bond that has the opportunity to have funding for the engineering building.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnsen and the board of regents focused on the contingency budget planning process, which comes after the regents approved Johnsen\u2019s best-case scenario budget in November that asked for $350 million from the state.<\/p>\n

Johnsen said he will continue to push for the university\u2019s full budget request, but he acknowledged that nothing was guaranteed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not unreasonable for us to expect even deeper cuts than what the governor has proposed,\u201d Johnsen said. \u201cThere\u2019s no question this is going to be difficult in that this is the third year in a row that there will be reductions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnsen said the cuts will have a long-term effect on students, staff and faculty.<\/p>\n

He told the board of regents that preserving the university\u2019s rural campuses, outside of Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau, is a priority.<\/p>\n

Johnsen said his staff is compiling a list of programs based on their value that will go before the board for their consideration by January and for final approval in June.<\/p>\n

Information from: Fairbanks (Alaska) Daily News-Miner, http:\/\/www.newsminer.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FAIRBANKS \u2014 University of Alaska officials are working to prioritize programs as they face another round of cuts outlined in Gov. Bill Walker\u2019s budget plan. The statewide university system would receive about $330 million for fiscal year 2017 under Walker\u2019s plan released Wednesday, reported the Fairbanks Daily News<\/a>-Miner. The new figure would reduce university funding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-21522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21522"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=21522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}