The president of one of UNM’s peer institutions is making news by taking a voluntary 4.6 percent pay cut, but President Schmidly contends he’s been there, done that.
Richard Lariviere, University of Oregon president, has joined other Oregon university presidents in taking a voluntary 4.6 percent cut, scraping more than $11,000 off his $234,000 yearly salary.
Schmidly said his 10-day voluntary furlough this summer, as well as another five-day break he has planned in May, will save the University $21,000 from his more than $400,000 yearly salary. Schmidly said university presidents nationwide are cutting their salaries to serve the interests of their university.
“That’s happened at other places, I think — in the country too — and other places have done what I’ve done, which is do a voluntary furlough,” he said. “And I’ve furloughed myself 15 days.”
University Spokeswoman Susan McKinsey said 15 business days without pay will amount to about a 6 percent salary reduction.
Diane Saunders, director of Communications for the Oregon University System, said all presidents of public universities in Oregon voluntarily took a 4.6 percent pay cut this year.
“The reduction for the presidents was voluntary. They are under multi-year contracts, so they were not under any legal obligation, if you will, to take a pay cut,” she said. “But they felt strongly amongst all the presidents that they should really share the pain that the rest of the campus is taking in terms of budget cuts, program cuts (and) students’ tuition increasing.”
Schmidly said he decided to create a voluntary furlough system in response to budget cuts imposed by the legislature. He estimated that four people have taken advantage of the voluntary furlough system so far.
“These are tough times. We’ve been fortunate,” he said. “We’ve been able to manage these budget reductions without having mandatory furloughs, but I felt it was important to create a voluntary furlough system, and since I created it, I felt like I should lead the way.”
State Sen. Eric Griego introduced a joint memorial to the legislature that would recommend UNM to reduce the salaries of the 20 highest-paid people, which will go before the Senate Education Committee today at 8:30 a.m.
Schmidly said he wasn’t sure how accurate the information Griego presented to the legislature was.
“I think there’s a bit of misinformation there, but I will be talking with (Griego),” Schmidly said. “My hope is we get through this (budget crisis) without anybody having to reduce their salaries, but I don’t know if that’s possible yet.”
Schmidly said the University has had to cut about $16 million from its budget but has done so without firing people or instituting mandatory pay cuts.
“I think, right now, we haven’t had to ask anybody — other than voluntarily — to take a pay cut. We haven’t been laying people off,” he said. “We’ve been able to manage these budget reductions to date. And now we have to see what happens. All options are on the table.”
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The University has been careful not to cut too much funding from academics, Schmidly said.
According to data provided by the President’s Office, 16.3 percent of the cuts have come from academics, for a total of $2,629,689. In contrast, 30.1 percent of the cuts have come from the administration side, for a total of $4,848,604.
Schmidly said UNM has been lucky, because some other universities have suffered much larger budget cuts.
“Yes, we’ve felt some pain, but we haven’t felt it anywhere near like some other places in the country,” he said. “Now that doesn’t mean we won’t, but so far we’ve been able to manage the pain, so that we haven’t had to put anybody in the hospital.”
