RALEIGH – Legislators return to Raleigh today for the start of the 2007 regular session, with Democrats holding stronger majorities in both the state House (68 Democrats to 52 Republicans) and Senate (31 Democrats to 19 Republicans). Within a week, legislators will begin to wade through wish-list items from the University of North Carolina system. The list includes policy changes and a large spending request to give more money for faculty salaries.
The first General Assembly session of the new year will be held at noon. Today’s sessions are primarily ceremonial, with swearing-in ceremonies and the official transfer of the Speaker of the House chair to Orange County Democrat Rep. Joe Hackney. Democrats elected Hackney to replace the embattled Rep. Jim Black. Senate Democrats elected Sen. Marc Basnight to serve an unprecedented eighth term as Senate President Pro Tem.
Real work on legislation will not occur until committee assignments are announced, which should come no later than next week. At the top of UNC’s legislative agenda are policy changes that come from recommendations made by the President’s Advisory Committee on Efficiency and Effectiveness (PACE), part of a report released in November. PACE is a system-wide effort to make the UNC system run more efficiently. UNC claims that if fully implemented the recommendations would save taxpayers about $62 million while avoiding costs of $426 million over the next five years. The cost avoidance refers to money that would have to be spent if the recommendations are not implemented.
UNC is seeking approval for only some of the recommendations in the PACE report. The administration wants legislative approval to eliminate duplicative reports, modify construction notification periods, and extend leasing authority to some campuses. It also wants to repeal a state law that requires water and juice contracts to be solicited separately.
UNC also wants to eliminate a provision that prohibits spouses of Board of Governors (BOG) members or Board of Trustees members from being state employees. (Spouses would still not be able to serve as officers or employees of UNC if they were married to a BOG member or elected to the General Assembly.)
In November, the UNC submitted a budget request to the state that sought $2.57 billion in state funding for the 2008 fiscal year. The system’s current state appropriation is a little more than $2.2 billion. UNC is seeking more than $270 million in fiscal year 2008 and $216 million in fiscal year 2009, according to the budget request.
The budget request seeks $116 million in 2008 and $115 in 2009 for academic salary increases. Most of that money ($87.7 million) would be spent in a two-year effort to bring the average faculty salaries on each campus to the 80th percentile of peer institutions. According to the budget request, the average salaries of professor, associate professor and assistant professor were compared to each school’s peer institutions, based on a list approved by the Board of Governors in February 2006 and schools with the same Carnegie ranking.
For each school, the amount requested varies. UNC-Chapel Hill and North Carolina State stand to receive the most in funding from this plan. According to UNC’s budget request, UNC-Chapel Hill would receive $20 million over two years. UNC-Chapel Hill’s BOG -approved peer institutions are Duke, Emory, John Hopkins, Texas, University of California-Berkley, UCLA, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, USC, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.
North Carolina State would receive $17.9 million under this plan. Its peer institutions are Iowa State, Cornell, Georgia Tech, Michigan State, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, Texas A&M, UC-Davis, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Virginia Tech.