Budget Reductions Cause Layoffs at NSU

Northwestern State University served termination notices to 26 full-time employees and 8 part-time personnel in its continuing efforts to offset some $9.7 million in state budget cuts over the past 18 months and projected future reductions.

NSU President Dr. Randall J. Webb said the termination of the 17 full-time Civil Service employees, 9 full-time unclassified personnel and 8 part-time unclassified staff members will become effective by the beginning of the new fiscal year that starts July 1 and will reduce personnel costs by some $1,072,000.

In addition to the 34 layoffs, Webb said 12 tenured faculty members and 5 Civil Service employees will retire by the end of the current fiscal year under an incentive plan that was developed to help reduce staffing and personnel costs.

Webb said the university “has been developing for several months reorganization and retrenchment plans that will result in the elimination and consolidation of positions, programs and services. These new personnel reductions are related primarily to those plans to downsize and reorganize the university.”

State funding for Northwestern has been reduced by $9,699,464, or 19.51 percent, since July 1 of 2008. The reductions include a $2.1 million mid-year cut in 2008-09, a $4 million reduction at the beginning of the current fiscal year, a $2.2 million mid-year cut earlier this year and a recent fourth quarter reduction for the current fiscal year of $1.3 million.

The university has also been informed, Webb said, that state funding for next year will be reduced by $1.1 million and could be cut even more drastically when federal stimulus funds, including more than $10 million in the NSU budget, run out before the 2011-12 fiscal year. In addition, the university must absorb some $2 million next year in such unfunded mandates as insurance and retirement costs that will not be covered by state allocations.

As a result of the state budget cuts, 160 positions have now been eliminated at Northwestern, reducing the size of the university’s faculty and staff from some 960 positions at the beginning of the 2007-08 fiscal year to just over 800.

Those personnel reductions included the most recent layoffs of 34 employees, notification in December to 19 faculty and staff members that their employment would not be renewed for 2010-11 and the loss of 87 vacant positions that were frozen and ultimately eliminated. Twenty custodial positions were eliminated when the university reduced its contract for custodial services.

In addition, the university has reduced funding for adjunct instruction, athletics, student employment, graduate assistantships and departmental budgets for travel, supplies and operating services to balance the budget in the wake of such deep cuts in state funding.

Webb said cuts in state funding have resulted in personnel reductions at all public universities in Louisiana in recent months. He said the eight schools in the University of Louisiana System, which includes Northwestern, have laid off 465 employees and eliminated 600 vacant positions.

“These decisions that adversely affect people’s lives are extremely agonizing,” Webb said, “but there are simply no other options to reduce spending to offset such substantial budget cuts since some 70 percent of the university budget is allocated to personnel costs.”

Webb said the university “is making every effort to assist individuals who have been affected by personnel reductions. Job fairs are planned to inform personnel of other employment opportunities and possibilities, and career and personal counseling is also being offered to those who are being displaced by personnel reductions.”

Louisiana higher education officials testified in legislative hearings recently that the impact of continuing budget cuts could result in the closure of eight universities, including Northwestern. Webb said that information was offered “only as a hypothetical, worst case scenario that could be one of the ways to balance budgets if funding reductions become more severe.”

He said higher education leaders later emphasized that the closure of universities “has not been planned, proposed or recommended. The most plausible approach to addressing more budget cuts seems to be the course that Northwestern and other schools have taken in reducing personnel and other costs and developing retrenchment plans that will allow us to continue to curtail spending in the future if necessary.”