Eight UNM departments reported a combined deficit of more than $11 million as of June, according to a report presented to the regents this month.
And those departments will not get help from UNM's $5.3 million central reserve fund, said Andrew Cullen, associate vice president for institutional planning.
UNM has set aside the reserve funds in case of an emergency, he said, and the UNM administration plans to harvest an additional $1 million this year from campus offices and departments to deposit in the fund.
Cullen said the fund might be used to cover budget shortages caused by funding cuts from the Legislature.
"The current plan for the funds harvested earlier this month is to apply them against the state budget cuts," Cullen said in an e-mail. "They will not be used to cover existing deficits."
He said departments with negative balances have a plan to make up the shortages.
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"I think the current administrative dean in the SUB is doing a good job of covering their expenditures, but they have had a deficit from five or six years ago, and they are slowly chipping away at that deficit," he said.
Many departments operating in the red exist as "auxiliaries," Cullen said, which means they are departments run as small businesses.
Institutional Support Services has the largest deficit at nearly $6 million.
The department includes KNME, the Championship Golf Course, Popejoy Hall and a printing plant that was closed because it could not decrease its deficit.
Walter Miller, associate vice president of Student Life and director of the SUB, said his department has a deficit of more than $800,000 but that he is finding ways to decrease it.
During the 2007 fiscal year, the SUB's deficit was reduced by $54,783, according to Cullen's report.
To offset these problems, the SUB has not filled some positions and has focused on making the facility available for conferences, Miller said.
He said the department has been taking out chunks of the deficit for the past three or four years, and he estimated the SUB will be back in the black within five years.
"We're not eliminating any services. We are just trying to do it smarter, so we will be able to get that to a zero," Miller said.
Other departments on campus are having more difficulty reducing their deficits.
UNM's Office of the Medical Investigator has a deficit of more than $1.6 million, and Tim Stepetic, director of operations for the office, said the department has cut spending and that additional cuts may be in store.
The office's yearly budget is $7 million, but it generates only $2 million through its services and tries to make up the difference through state funding, which provides another $4.5 million, Stepetic said.
He said the office has raised prices to providers and cut down on personnel.
"We have had a certain number of layoffs in personnel," Stepetic said. "We're not sure if we need to do it further, because actually we are down to the situation where we have one job and one person. We don't have a lot of overlap of employees."
The office is considering cutting back services that contribute to the death investigation of patients, he said.
Stepetic said the office might also decrease the number of investigations it takes on.
Stepetic aims for the cuts to help the office pay off about $200,000 of its deficit this year.
The Office of the Medical Investigator provides a full range of death investigation services, including autopsies, toxicology and bacteriology testing and other tests needed to determine the cause of death. The office is used by agencies statewide, Stepetic said.
Although the department is applying for more funds from the Legislature, Stepetic said it doesn't look like it will receive them.
"This year we have identified at least $600,000 in funds that we need to help us catch up - to help us maintain our services - and that request will go to the Legislature, but this year it doesn't look very optimistic, so that might not happen," he said.
Coverage of the central reserve fund continues Monday.
BOX:
President Schmidly will post a Webcast concerning the University budget on Unm.edu today.
