PORTLAND, Maine — The University of Southern Maine has announced a framework for balancing its budget — and it involves more layoffs.
Fourteen staff employees — including eight from the administration — are affected by the latest cuts, unveiled by USM President David Flanagan as part of a plan to close a projected $16 million budget gap.
In all, $5 million is being saved by staff reductions — many of them layoffs — while a further $7 million is being cut from faculty positions, including more than 50 posts that are being eliminated. Five academic programs are also being scrapped.
The remainder of the savings will come from utilizing reserve accounts, increasing revenue from sources such as campus parking and cutting back on other expenses, including research.
"This is not a final budget, but what's significant about this is that we now have a framework," USM spokesman Chris Quint says, adding the final budget proposal will be presented to the Board of Trustees for review early next month.
"We've really taken that first step along the path to really realigning the university, realigning our staff and faculty with the actual students that come in and the revenue that we have," Quint says.
The cutbacks have sparked fierce resistance among USM's students and faculty, concerned about the effect on students and on the local economy.
Economics and gender studies professor Susan Feiner also says the cuts don't make financial sense.
"The underlying thesis that USM, as part of the University of Maine System, faces a crushing budget deficit, is preposterous," she says.
Feiner accuses officials at the University of Maine System — of which USM is a part — of misrepresenting the organization's financial health.
"The system is not in a crisis," she says.
For example, Feiner says, her own independent research shows the system's unrestricted net assets have more than doubled since 2006, to $183 million.
University officials meanwhile deny charges of a financial cover up, and point to the twin problems of declining enrollment and flat revenues as evidence of the need for restructuring.