State Representative Steve Kulik (D- Turner’s Falls) painted a bleak picture to the Faculty Senate as he explained the current fiscal situation from a legislator’s point of view, with little hope in sight.
“There has been an 18 percent decline in state revenues,” Kulik said. “Every department is affected.”
Acting Governor Jane Swift’s submitted budget for Fiscal Year 2003 is naive, Kulik said.
“It starts out, by ay all assessments to be about a billion dollars out of balance,” Kulik explained. “It’s a very political budget that is not based in reality. It’s not worth the paper it’s printed on.”
According to Kulik, Swift’s budget assumes a five percent increase in revenues from last year’s submitted budget.
The voter supported tax roll backs must also stop, Kulik said. The rollback was voted on in the 2000 election, during a period of economic growth. It proposed to drop the income tax rate from 5.85 percent to five percent. Kulik recommends freezing the drop at 5.6 percent.
“Those were flush times,” Kulik said. “At this point it is just foolhardy to continue on that pace.”
But with hard times ahead, budgets in every sector of the state will have to be reduced. In times like these, Kulik says, it is the “loudest voice that gets heard.”
And with students from every electoral district enrolled in the University of Massachusetts, Kulik says that UMass has a loud voice – if they choose to use it.
Echoing Representative Ellen Story’s (D-Amherst) words at the budget forum of Feb. 7, Kulik said it is vital for students and their parents to register to vote, and to contact their representatives.
“It is so very important to contact their [students’ and parents’] representatives in their districts,” Kulik said. “Every legislator needs to know they have a stake in UMass.”
Kulik answered questions from the Faculty Senate after his presentation.
“The rumor is that the people on Beacon Hill have not heard this year, or last year from the board of trustees of this University or from the president’s office,” Professor Ron Story said.
“There are no rumors in politics,” Kulik said. “I know I have never been contacted. The board is stacked. It is not a board of trustees that sees its role as one of advocacy, and it should.
“[The trustees] do care,” Kulik added. “But they are more than caretakers.”
Professor Brian O’Connor, the Faculty Senate’s delegate to the Board of Trustees, mentioned that at the last general meeting the entire board was not in attendance, and that at many of the smaller committee meetings only a handful of trustees were present.
Professor Joseph Donohue expressed his concern over the cut to the library’s acquisition budget, which is a line item in the state’s budget, and not a part of the University’s actual appropriation. The library’s acquisition budget was cut so severely that there will be no new books purchased this year.
“It seems to me that one of the real problems is a simple one,” Donohue told Kulik. “[This issue] symbolizes the disdain or uncaring attitude your colleagues have for the University.”
