At YSU, being broke means pay raises for employees

Last June, Ohio Senate President Richard Finan, R-Cincinnati, issued a public warning to the state's universities and colleges: Higher education should not expect any more money from the General Assembly than what it received in the current biennium -- 2002-2003. With many legislators projecting a $4 billion operating fund shortfall in the next two-year budget, Finan's warning should have struck a responsive chord on every campus in Ohio.
But considering what has taken place at Youngstown State University over the past two months, it would be fair to ask whether the Senate president's message just didn't reach the administration and the board of trustees, or whether they simply didn't care.
How else to explain the $2.78 million in pay raises granted to President David Sweet, nonunion administrators, faculty, classified employees, police and the professional staff? The total includes the increased cost of fringe benefits.
But even if Finan's comments could have been brushed off as the musings of a politician, it is noteworthy that YSU does not have the money to cover the raises. Sweet and the trustees insist that after the budget numbers have been crunched and massaged, the additional spending obligations will be met. One of the assumptions in this crunching and massaging is that the university will be successful in retrieving a large portion of the $2.7 million that was slashed from its allotment of funds by the Ohio Board of Regents.
That reduction followed the regents' announcement earlier this year that YSU would be getting $3 million less than it had anticipated as a result of the Republican controlled General Assembly and Republican Gov. Bob Taft cutting higher education's budget. All state universities and colleges were hit with the 6 percent reduction. As a result of receiving less money than they had anticipated, Sweet and the trustees raised tuition for the current semester by 8.9 percent.
Strike deadline
Indeed, during negotiations with the unions representing the faculty and the classified employees, Sweet made it known that a spirit of cooperation was necessary to get YSU over its financial hump. He asked for the one-year contract with a small pay raise. The faculty responded by setting a strike deadline and making it clear that the fall semester would begin without them unless their demands were met.
Sweet and the trustees folded, and that resulted in the faculty's receiving a three-year contract worth $1.25 million a year in pay increases and benefits. The classified employees grabbed a $700,000 package. The police and professional staff, whose contracts expire next year, get the same raises as those in the classified service.
But in the midst of the debate on campus and in the community at large over the university's inability to cover the additional costs, the trustees increased Sweet's annual salary by a whopping 6 percent and increased his annual housing allowance to $50,000.
Meanwhile, the president gave his administrators pay raises totaling $175,000.
Remember, YSU does not have the money to cover the $2.78 million tab.
How does the president justify paying John Habat, the vice president for administration, $129,500, which represents a not-too-shabby 7.8 percent increase? Well, he uses the same line that the faculty used during their negotiations: Even with the increase, Habat is still making less than his peers in other universities.
State Sen. Robert F. Hagan of Youngstown, D-33rd, says it's unconscionable that such huge raises have been granted to the president on down when YSU is on shaky financial ground and the board of regents is being asked to restore some of the funds that were cut.
Hagan knows that he and the other legislators from the Mahoning Valley are expected to lobby on YSU's behalf, but he also knows that if he complains too loudly in the Statehouse, he will be confronted with the pay raise issue.
It isn't too late for Sweet, his administrators, the faculty, the classified employees, the police and professional staff to right this terrible wrong: They should announce that they're giving back the raises for one year so YSU can get its financial house in order.
With such a gesture, the argument for increased state funding would certainly be strengthened.