Legislature may still decide where additional cuts will come from

PHOENIX - The budget compromise reached by the Legislature yesterday excluded an addition intended to force state agencies to return half of the unused salaries of employees who leave their jobs.

The initiative was found particularly threatening by Arizona's public universities, University of Arizona lobbyist Greg Fahey said. Nearly every college and department at UA has vacant positions to which the state allocates funds.

In some cases, the unspent salaries are used to pay Graduate Teaching Assistants for their work, said Dick Roberts, university budget director.

"We have many, many jobs that routinely turn over," UA President Peter Likins said. "And the notion that every time a job is vacated that half the budgeted salary for that position should go to the Legislature is just crippling; it's also unmanageable."

University officials contended that the loss of half of their funds from open positions would have seriously limited their ability to retain faculty members who are given offers to leave for other institutions, Roberts said.

The available funds are sometimes diverted to fund pay increases and to take the brunt of budget cuts when they arise.

Of the 66 full-time positions eliminated in December 2001, 51 were empty, according to a Feb. 6 financial status report from Likins' office.

Republican Rep. Bob Robson said the addition was created in the House as another means to return money to the state's general fund. The measure was added to the Senate's budget proposal later, Democratic Sen. Ruth Solomon said,

"We stuck that in, but that was supposed to come out in committee," said Solomon, chairwoman of the appropriations committee.

While that section has been removed, yesterday some members of the state House of Representatives discussed a method the Legislature may use to fill Arizona's swelling deficit for 2003. The new method would give the Legislature, instead of Arizona universities, the final decision about how and where university budget cuts would be made.

While the rescissions made in the fall were lump sum cuts to be implemented by the individual agencies, Robson suggested that for the next round of cuts, legislators may opt to take a more controlling hand in determining what is reduced and how much.

"We're looking at all aspects," Robson said. "We'll be looking at all agencies from A to Z (to determine that) maybe this isn't something we should be into."

Rather than handing out blanket amounts to must be cut from the agencies' budgets, he suggested that it may be more prudent for the Legislature to determine what the state should and should not be doing with its revenue in light of a $1 billion deficit.

Fahey, however, bristled at the idea that the universities should be cut by those standing on the outside.

"Whatever the cut has to be, we asked them to be lump-sum amounts (for) us," he said. "(Legislators) think (their power) is a fine tool. That's a blunt instrument. It can do all kinds of damage."

Solomon said it was unlikely the Legislature would take on that level of "micromanagement" with the state agencies for this next round of rescissions. After November, though, when more senior members of the Legislature are term-limited out of office, she predicted that such action was possible.

"I don't think we'll have a lot of moderates in the Legislature," she said.

Diana Young contributed to this report.