The South Dakota Board of Regents has approved its budget proposal for next year. They're asking the Legislature for an 11% bigger slurp at the trough.
The budget proposal includes another shot at persuading the Legislature to let the Regents spend $3.8 million a year to turn every campus into a big wireless hotspot. In the modern world of mobile computing, being able to access the Internet from anywhere on campus makes perfect sense. Going wireless can also free up space currently dedicated to fixed computer labs for other uses (as is happening with a "computer lounge" here at DSU). But let's make sure the Regents don't include a Tablet PC mandate with their wireless plan. We love wireless, but we also love being able to buy our own computers (and keep them!) for half the price of the bloated leases of Gateway equipment that the Regents force on DSU undergrads.
The Regents want us to get Internet from thin air; they also have a way to make money appear from thin air. The Regents want to inject another $11 million into the budget by shifting payday one day forward. Move payday from the end of the month to the beginning of the next month, and the final payday of the fiscal year, June 30, disappears from this year's budget and moves to next year's, giving the Regents and extra $11 million to play with.
Now that sounds like a free lunch for the Regents, and that sounds fishy. $11 million dollars doesn't come out of nowhere; someone's pockets have to get picked. Regents exec Tad Perry says there could be some impact on retirement fund calculations and promises to work that out. But before we even get there, we're asking 5,500+ FTEs (see SDBOR Factbook 2008, p. 40 -- PDF alert!) to wait an extra day for their paychecks. I'm not sure exactly how you calculate the lost utility there: If I divide my current Regental salary by 365, that day's wait is worth $87, and the Regents will make me wait that extra day every month for the remainder of my employment. Over a year, that's a thousand bucks worth of utility lost.
Even if you don't buy that calculation—a day's wait isn't that big a deal— the Regents' money scheme sounds like the old hacker bank robbery trick where you break into the bank's computer and transfer a fraction of a penny from everyone else's account to yours: it's not a big deal to each individual, but it's still theft. Let's keep our funding honest and not base our universities' fiscal sustainability on bookkeeping tricks.
I think it would be a reasonable idea to have communities and universities working together to provide wireless internet to the entire community, not just campuses. It's also a good part of community economic development.
ReplyDeleteWow, great plan. Let's piss of 5500 employees for a few million dollars. We already are paying bottom shelf wages. Let's try and further piss off the staff.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, these people have no idea how to manage staff. Little inconveniences like this put eveyone on edge constantly.
Wow, the Regents want 11% more, and K-12 are suing the state for more. Rounds continually says he is giving so much to state aid to education, but as seen here, a lot of it is going to higher ed, NOT K-12. If there isn't enough money to give a little more to K-12, then the Regents can take their request for a long hike somewhere else. The money needs to go where it's needed more.
ReplyDeleteAnon:
ReplyDeleteThe money is needed in both places. Unfortunately, the universities can't leverage bonds to support themselves unlike K-12.
I tend to agree with CAH that school support should be from local sources and there in be more flexible.
Ok Comrade Cory;
ReplyDeleteWe know that it doesn't take millions and millions of dollars to set up wireless networks. Why shouldn't that kind of upgrade come from existing funds?
Didn't state government already pull that bookkeeping trick once in the 1990s under Janklow? Maybe the BOR wasn't included that time? Or maybe it wasn't payroll, but some other financial responsibilities. I can't recall.
ReplyDeleteStill, it will cost the taxpayers in my opinion if we don't reduce the BOR budget accordingly because the following fiscal year they will return to the full number of pay days, and they'll also want the money they "saved" replaced again because it will be moved to another part of the budget.
Am I wrong? Very possibly. Correct me please.
This will cause regental employees who will retire in the next few years to have a fiscal quarter that has only 2 pay periods in it. That will reduce the average quarterly earnings and reduce their retirement benefit.
ReplyDeleteSomehow I don't see the BOR regents worry about a slight decrease in any pension due them. Don't think they will have a problem buying groceries, or anything else for that matter, because of this!
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