|
by EMILY MELTON
News Reporter
Due to a recent memorandum to all state agencies sent from the Office of State Budget Management, Appalachian State University has been instructed to strictly limit its expenditures.
“Right now we are not authorized to purchase even paper,” Vice Provost for Resource Management Timothy H. Burwell said. “That’s how extensive it is at this point. We cannot order paper from state funds without [requesting] an exception.”
According to the instructions, requests for funding will only be approved for mandatory obligations, including payroll, utilities, financial aid, debt service and aid required for public safety and welfare.
 Requests for funding will only be approved for mandatory obligations, including payroll, utilities, financial aid and debt service. Photo Illustration by Christy Bullins |
No orders using
state funding may be made, and any orders not received by April 16 must
be canceled. Minimal amounts of orders for food and drugs necessary to
provide services through the end of the fiscal year may be issued.
“There
are computers or other kinds of things that would have been on order
that have been canceled,” Burwell said. “We cannot order anything
without their approval.”
The university recently received approval for an exception request for funds used to pay for graduation ceremonies.
“We felt
that was a critical thing for us to do,” Burwell said. “We sent that
request earlier in the week and they did give us permission to spend
the amount of funds that we asked for.”
All travel requiring state funding must be terminated and no out-of-state travel will be authorized.
No promotions or reallocations may be made, and vacant permanent or temporary
positions may not be filled unless they are critical to classroom instruction, law enforcement, health care or public safety.
“We have
some open staff positions that are paid from the state funds that we
had to actually pull from the Web, and so those are no longer showing
as available positions because we can’t fill them at this time,”
Burwell said.
The
university is seeking clarification for hiring for the next fiscal
year, but any state-funded positions not used for instruction purposes
are unable to be filled at this time.
The instructions may affect student workers, depending on their source of funding.
“In the
[Plemmons] Student Union, a lot of the temporary and student worker
positions are paid for with non-state funds and when that is the case,
they are not under a hiring freeze,” he said.
Chancellor
Kenneth E. Peacock said the university’s commitment is to protect
courses, jobs for faculty and staff and to maintain quality in
academics offered.
“We were
all surprised by the memo that came out saying there’s no more travel,
there’s no more hiring, everything is frozen, there’d be no more
purchases of equipment or supplies, that all of that just got kind of
cut,” he said. “That caught us all by surprise.”
The Office of State Budget Management will likely send further updates when the new fiscal year begins July 1.
Chrissy Pearson, spokeswoman for N.C. Gov. Bev Perdue, said the memo is in effect until June 30.
“Governor
Perdue has been committed to making the choices and taking the right
steps to manage our budget situation in the hopes that we will soon
have a new budget passed and that the financial situation will
improve,” she said.
Peacock said updates will be sent as more information becomes available.
“I would
much rather say that we have a valuable product and strong academics
and great programs that prepare you for leadership and no money than to
say we have all the money in the world but we don’t have a good
product,” Peacock said.
Trackback(0)
 |
News 
TrackBack URI for this entry
Show/Hide comments
